My ISP charges 3â to mail a monthly statement in the interest of cutting down on waste paper and mailing costs, so I switched to online billing a long time ago. I don't really miss it because they were kind enough to keep sending an extra envelope with advertisements and "tell your friends" incentives every month, completely free!
And if you liked Stephenson try Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is another one of my favorites, plus Accelerando by Charles Stross, A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge and almost any book by Alastair Reynolds for some hard sci-fi. Last but not least, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is not bad, Vacuum Diagrams is a nice introduction to the universe and its 5 million year timeline.
Don't forget you're also developing the F-35 JSF, which seems to be a more versatile F-22 at the cost of some air superiority (which is already far superior to every other nation's air force). The bill for that program seems to be around $380 billion.
The problem is because the bill is so broad and vague it opens the door for selective enforcement, both in who you target and how you target them. This was brought up a few times at the hearing, and dutifully ignored. Out of all the amendments I saw proposed the only one that was voted through allowed ISPs and other institutions (like universities for example) to block an entire website rather than just the infringing content on it, if it's easier or cheaper for them to do so. A few congressmen pointed out that most websites these days run on user generated content, and that it's unbelievably stupid to encourage ISPs to block the entire site on the actions of a few of its contributors, but nobody listened.
Never mind the fact that under the bill non-profit entities like universities (which often have their own internal DNS system which qualifies them as "service providers" under the bill) would have to block websites just like an ISP would. Someone introduced an amendment to give non-profits the same protections from this clause as commercial entities get in the bill, but of course that was voted down.
I thought it was a lot more ridiculous that they spent a full 30 minutes afterward arguing over whether or not to strike the word "offensive" from the record. In the end she agreed to replace it with "impolitic and unkind". I'm surprised they didn't take a break for juice boxes and Dunkaroos while they waited.
Basically, at several points during the hearing some congressmen (usually Mr. Chaffetz and a couple others) pushed the committee to bring in some high level tech experts from various branches of the government to talk about the possible implications to DNSSec and general cyber security that SOPA might have, hence the classified briefing. They also pushed for more public hearings over and over again. It got to the point where Mr. Chaffetz offered to withdraw an amendment he made if the chairman would consider holding the classified briefing and, ideally, at least one other public briefing with "internet experts". He said he would consider it, but he didn't sound very sincere about it ("Oh, yeah ok, sure I'll consider it. Are you withdrawing your amendment now? Good, lets move on.").
I just posted this in the other thread, but I'll go ahead and repost it here too, that way I can feel like I didn't waste my time on it. I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.
On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.
On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they allreceivedlargecampaigncontributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.
So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:
I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.
Probably too late here, but I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.
On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.
On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they allreceivedlargecampaigncontributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.
So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:
I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.
I have a lot of confidence in modern nuclear technology, but I have very little confidence in the companies building and maintaining it. No matter how theoretically safe you make a reactor you're always going to be up against the cost cutting, profit oriented ethic that forms the basis of capitalism. I just don't think it's practical to regulate the industry enough to ensure it's safe.
That said, I would still take the minute risk of a nuclear disaster over the continuous disaster of fossil fuels. There are better alternatives, but it seems like the prevailing attitude in the industry is "Don't want nuclear? Fine, we'll go back to coal".
It might be useless today, but now that they've got that first step of forcing an ISP to block a website they have all the time in the world to work out more effective alternatives to DNS filtering. I don't think they'll ever find something 100% effective, but they can do some real damage to the internet as we know it in the search. And as an added bonus they can say they've "exhausted all legal avenues" in their valiant struggle against piracy, that should help their cause some the next time they push for new legislation don't you think?
For those that are interested in a closer look behind the scenes of the Frostbite 2 engine DICE recently held a 1 hour talk about the inner workings of the graphics in BF3. It's pretty amazing what can be done with DX 11 these days.
The last 3 accepted stories have had clearly misleading titles or summaries. I don't normally complain about editing on/. but christ guys, get it together.
Asking the rich to focus less on their individual wealth is simply too much to ask, it goes against the core ideals of capitalism and the reason they were able to get rich in the first place (assuming they weren't born into wealth). It's just not realistic on anything but the long term.
Instead you should find a balance between capitalism and effective regulation. Corporations should try to maximize their profits, but there absolutely have to be rules laid down to keep things sane. One of the most important rules is to keep capitalism and democracy separate. Nobody should be able to buy anything legislatively, as soon as you allow that everything else goes down the shitter. Try this: All the campaign money is taken from tax dollars and thrown into a giant pot, every party gets a share of it based on their "size" (quantify that how you will), and that's all they get. Throw in some harsh new penalties on corruption and see if things don't start to improve.
I'd argue the main reason things have gotten so bad over the past few decades is the utter lack of rules. They either don't exist, or they're so ineffective and full of holes that they may as well not be there at all. Don't wait for the protestors to draft a nice list of "demands" for the evening news to regurgitate, the problems are obvious enough. Tax loopholes need to be closed, justice needs to be applied to the rich just as equally as to the poor, campaign finance needs to be reformed, corporate rights need to be reformed, fines need to be based on percentage of revenue instead of fixed sums, military budgets need to be scaled back dramatically, the education system needs more investment, people need to be trained and put to work on infrastructure projects, the list goes on and on and on. Take your pick and get started. It's hard and it's complicated, but for god's sake it has to get done.
Now for the caveat: don't ask me how, because I haven't got a clue.
I don't understand this way of looking at memory. Unused memory is just that, unused. It's basically wasted. Why is this seen as an advantage? As long as enough memory is freed up when it's needed then I'd rather have the OS find a use for it, hopefully for things like cutting down application loading time. Whether W7 puts it to good use or not is up for debate, I personally have no idea.
Besides, 4 GB is pretty standard these days, I really don't see the problem in an OS taking ~12% of that when it's not needed. Hell, take more. Take a full 2 GB if you can put it to good use, as long as it's cleared when another program requests it then why not?
Honestly, why not try it? Either the courts will allow it or they won't, from Sony's point of view all this means is they've gained one possible avenue of defense against future class action suits. Maybe they'll get some bad publicity out of the deal, but it's not as if things could get much worse for them in that regard.
You may be right. Do you feel like spending tens of thousands of dollars and going through 5 years of constant stress to test your assumption? In the end you might be lucky enough to have them drop their case against you, leaving nothing decided so they're free to go after the next person. Such is justice when you're up against a multi-million dollar law firm backed by media conglomerates.
Stop working for those who underpay and you end up unemployed, like the other 85,000 engineers. Ideas based on "if everyone does X" never work, because there's always some guy who will work for the crappy pay. You know, that guy who has a family to support and is just happy to have a job "in such tough economic times". Side note, when do you think economic times will stop being tough? Never again I'd wager. Tough times force people into line, who wants to risk losing their job by standing up for what's right?
But say enough engineers become unemployed due to demanding better pay, what do you think will happen? The President will make an announcement about how universities need to churn out more engineers, because clearly there's a shortage. The only way you may have a chance is if you're incredibly good at what you do, say the upper 10th percentile in your field.
I hate to be so cynical, but nothing is going to change. If you're not happy with the conditions in the US, then consider moving to another country. It's a better alternative than making your own life miserable trying to fight the status quo when the status quo has become so deeply entrenched.
What it boils down to is the simple idea that copyright as it stands is too big to fail. Much like certain banks were deemed too big to fail when their shoddy business practices landed them in a world of financial trouble. If you ask me "to big to fail" is just another way of saying "it's broken". We let it run out of control for too long and now we're in a real bind. I don't see any way out but to let it fail and suck up the consequences, otherwise it's just going to get more and more ridiculous until it eventually collapses anyway, possibly dragging other good things down with it (like the internet as we know it today).
It's such a shame that SOE owns the Planetside IP. The first 6 months of that game were incredibly fun, one of the best online games I'd ever played. You could log in at any time, jump into a big battle, play for an hour and then log off again. No real grinding, no excessive travel times, no waiting for things to happen, it was great for people who wanted the unique kind of fun an MMO brings without spending ages to get it. Then slowly but surely they ran it into the ground. It should have been a great success, considering how popular FPS games became shortly after its release. Instead it fizzled away, mostly due to lack of marketing and some absolutely terrible expansions that seemed like they weren't play tested at all.
Now Planetside 2 is in the works, and while I desperately want it to be good it's still in SOE's hands. "Hopes... deleted."
We won't enter the "modern" nuclear age until we're actually allowed to build modern nuclear plants. Last time I checked the vast majority of reactors running today are old Mark I and Mark II designs from 20-50 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't have it both ways.
Maybe you can, so long as you pay the right people. I guess we'll find out soon enough!
My ISP charges 3â to mail a monthly statement in the interest of cutting down on waste paper and mailing costs, so I switched to online billing a long time ago. I don't really miss it because they were kind enough to keep sending an extra envelope with advertisements and "tell your friends" incentives every month, completely free!
And if you liked Stephenson try Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is another one of my favorites, plus Accelerando by Charles Stross, A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge and almost any book by Alastair Reynolds for some hard sci-fi. Last but not least, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is not bad, Vacuum Diagrams is a nice introduction to the universe and its 5 million year timeline.
Don't forget you're also developing the F-35 JSF, which seems to be a more versatile F-22 at the cost of some air superiority (which is already far superior to every other nation's air force). The bill for that program seems to be around $380 billion.
I'm sure that would work, but it's still disgusting considering the people already pay taxes for just that reason.
The problem is because the bill is so broad and vague it opens the door for selective enforcement, both in who you target and how you target them. This was brought up a few times at the hearing, and dutifully ignored. Out of all the amendments I saw proposed the only one that was voted through allowed ISPs and other institutions (like universities for example) to block an entire website rather than just the infringing content on it, if it's easier or cheaper for them to do so. A few congressmen pointed out that most websites these days run on user generated content, and that it's unbelievably stupid to encourage ISPs to block the entire site on the actions of a few of its contributors, but nobody listened.
Never mind the fact that under the bill non-profit entities like universities (which often have their own internal DNS system which qualifies them as "service providers" under the bill) would have to block websites just like an ISP would. Someone introduced an amendment to give non-profits the same protections from this clause as commercial entities get in the bill, but of course that was voted down.
I thought it was a lot more ridiculous that they spent a full 30 minutes afterward arguing over whether or not to strike the word "offensive" from the record. In the end she agreed to replace it with "impolitic and unkind". I'm surprised they didn't take a break for juice boxes and Dunkaroos while they waited.
Basically, at several points during the hearing some congressmen (usually Mr. Chaffetz and a couple others) pushed the committee to bring in some high level tech experts from various branches of the government to talk about the possible implications to DNSSec and general cyber security that SOPA might have, hence the classified briefing. They also pushed for more public hearings over and over again. It got to the point where Mr. Chaffetz offered to withdraw an amendment he made if the chairman would consider holding the classified briefing and, ideally, at least one other public briefing with "internet experts". He said he would consider it, but he didn't sound very sincere about it ("Oh, yeah ok, sure I'll consider it. Are you withdrawing your amendment now? Good, lets move on.").
I just posted this in the other thread, but I'll go ahead and repost it here too, that way I can feel like I didn't waste my time on it. I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.
On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.
On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they all received large campaign contributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.
So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:
On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.
On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they all received large campaign contributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.
So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:
I have a lot of confidence in modern nuclear technology, but I have very little confidence in the companies building and maintaining it. No matter how theoretically safe you make a reactor you're always going to be up against the cost cutting, profit oriented ethic that forms the basis of capitalism. I just don't think it's practical to regulate the industry enough to ensure it's safe.
That said, I would still take the minute risk of a nuclear disaster over the continuous disaster of fossil fuels. There are better alternatives, but it seems like the prevailing attitude in the industry is "Don't want nuclear? Fine, we'll go back to coal".
It might be useless today, but now that they've got that first step of forcing an ISP to block a website they have all the time in the world to work out more effective alternatives to DNS filtering. I don't think they'll ever find something 100% effective, but they can do some real damage to the internet as we know it in the search. And as an added bonus they can say they've "exhausted all legal avenues" in their valiant struggle against piracy, that should help their cause some the next time they push for new legislation don't you think?
Come to think of it, what happened to the Google Cache links? And who's idea was it to remove the search box at the bottom of the page?
For those that are interested in a closer look behind the scenes of the Frostbite 2 engine DICE recently held a 1 hour talk about the inner workings of the graphics in BF3. It's pretty amazing what can be done with DX 11 these days.
The last 3 accepted stories have had clearly misleading titles or summaries. I don't normally complain about editing on /. but christ guys, get it together.
Asking the rich to focus less on their individual wealth is simply too much to ask, it goes against the core ideals of capitalism and the reason they were able to get rich in the first place (assuming they weren't born into wealth). It's just not realistic on anything but the long term.
Instead you should find a balance between capitalism and effective regulation. Corporations should try to maximize their profits, but there absolutely have to be rules laid down to keep things sane. One of the most important rules is to keep capitalism and democracy separate. Nobody should be able to buy anything legislatively, as soon as you allow that everything else goes down the shitter. Try this: All the campaign money is taken from tax dollars and thrown into a giant pot, every party gets a share of it based on their "size" (quantify that how you will), and that's all they get. Throw in some harsh new penalties on corruption and see if things don't start to improve.
I'd argue the main reason things have gotten so bad over the past few decades is the utter lack of rules. They either don't exist, or they're so ineffective and full of holes that they may as well not be there at all. Don't wait for the protestors to draft a nice list of "demands" for the evening news to regurgitate, the problems are obvious enough. Tax loopholes need to be closed, justice needs to be applied to the rich just as equally as to the poor, campaign finance needs to be reformed, corporate rights need to be reformed, fines need to be based on percentage of revenue instead of fixed sums, military budgets need to be scaled back dramatically, the education system needs more investment, people need to be trained and put to work on infrastructure projects, the list goes on and on and on. Take your pick and get started. It's hard and it's complicated, but for god's sake it has to get done.
Now for the caveat: don't ask me how, because I haven't got a clue.
I don't understand this way of looking at memory. Unused memory is just that, unused. It's basically wasted. Why is this seen as an advantage? As long as enough memory is freed up when it's needed then I'd rather have the OS find a use for it, hopefully for things like cutting down application loading time. Whether W7 puts it to good use or not is up for debate, I personally have no idea.
Besides, 4 GB is pretty standard these days, I really don't see the problem in an OS taking ~12% of that when it's not needed. Hell, take more. Take a full 2 GB if you can put it to good use, as long as it's cleared when another program requests it then why not?
Honestly, why not try it? Either the courts will allow it or they won't, from Sony's point of view all this means is they've gained one possible avenue of defense against future class action suits. Maybe they'll get some bad publicity out of the deal, but it's not as if things could get much worse for them in that regard.
You may be right. Do you feel like spending tens of thousands of dollars and going through 5 years of constant stress to test your assumption? In the end you might be lucky enough to have them drop their case against you, leaving nothing decided so they're free to go after the next person. Such is justice when you're up against a multi-million dollar law firm backed by media conglomerates.
I thought their take on The Green Lantern was pretty funny.
Apparently the Firefox team is working on this right now.
Stop working for those who underpay and you end up unemployed, like the other 85,000 engineers. Ideas based on "if everyone does X" never work, because there's always some guy who will work for the crappy pay. You know, that guy who has a family to support and is just happy to have a job "in such tough economic times". Side note, when do you think economic times will stop being tough? Never again I'd wager. Tough times force people into line, who wants to risk losing their job by standing up for what's right?
But say enough engineers become unemployed due to demanding better pay, what do you think will happen? The President will make an announcement about how universities need to churn out more engineers, because clearly there's a shortage. The only way you may have a chance is if you're incredibly good at what you do, say the upper 10th percentile in your field.
I hate to be so cynical, but nothing is going to change. If you're not happy with the conditions in the US, then consider moving to another country. It's a better alternative than making your own life miserable trying to fight the status quo when the status quo has become so deeply entrenched.
What it boils down to is the simple idea that copyright as it stands is too big to fail. Much like certain banks were deemed too big to fail when their shoddy business practices landed them in a world of financial trouble. If you ask me "to big to fail" is just another way of saying "it's broken". We let it run out of control for too long and now we're in a real bind. I don't see any way out but to let it fail and suck up the consequences, otherwise it's just going to get more and more ridiculous until it eventually collapses anyway, possibly dragging other good things down with it (like the internet as we know it today).
It's such a shame that SOE owns the Planetside IP. The first 6 months of that game were incredibly fun, one of the best online games I'd ever played. You could log in at any time, jump into a big battle, play for an hour and then log off again. No real grinding, no excessive travel times, no waiting for things to happen, it was great for people who wanted the unique kind of fun an MMO brings without spending ages to get it. Then slowly but surely they ran it into the ground. It should have been a great success, considering how popular FPS games became shortly after its release. Instead it fizzled away, mostly due to lack of marketing and some absolutely terrible expansions that seemed like they weren't play tested at all.
Now Planetside 2 is in the works, and while I desperately want it to be good it's still in SOE's hands. "Hopes... deleted."
We won't enter the "modern" nuclear age until we're actually allowed to build modern nuclear plants. Last time I checked the vast majority of reactors running today are old Mark I and Mark II designs from 20-50 years ago.