The EU is failing and the last 60 years of Nanny-State is failing due to lower birthrates and higher welfare expenses in the EU
You sound someone with an agenda...
Anyway, do you have a reference for this allegation. And I mean the allegation that a French minister said that the people shouldn't have been allowed to see the EU Constitution?
Whilst I can't claim to know what is going through their heads, it seems to me far more likely they are worried that the US could (if provoked, perhaps) disconnect* rogue states. Of course they wouldn't get away with removing someone permanently, but if they did it for a few weeks it could cause huge commercial damage to a country.
Sovereign nations never like being beholden to outsiders. If you don't believe this then look at the middle east.
Whilst it might be true that it is a cloaked attempt to stifle free speech (although you have to wonder why the EU isn't doing it in the non-internet domain already), it is far far from obvious.
And finally, whilst it may be true that the free speech of americans is protected under US law, it is (I assume) not true that the law protects the freedom of anyone else. Especially if you're French;-)
* By disconnect, I do of course mean refuse to resolve names. From a practical point of view (and over small timescales) this comes down to the same thing. I think.
I can't see the point in slavishly adhering to definitions. Other people like using MSN because it has non-messaging functions like whiteboard and pictures and so on. What do you think they're going to reply to your "oh but video isn't messaging"?
Consider other statements like
the words 'word' and 'processing' have nothing to do pictures - so you should remove all picture embedding facilities from OOo and MS Word.
the word 'computer' means a device that performs high speed mathematical or logical operations. obviously that has nothing to do with music, so the very idea that people would want to listen to music on their computer is absurd.
the word 'concert' is to do with a musical performance. clearly there is no need to include dancing or lighting in this. most pop bands must be pretty stupid to not realise this.
In short, make what people want, not what a dictionary tells you to.
Because it takes forever to scroll scroll when there is stuff going on on the side.
I don't know whether it's the fault of nvidia, xorg, linux, fedora (e.g. it's fine on windows), gecko or firefox, but I do know that it is very annoying and is the only reason I went to the trouble of installing an adblocking extension.
In information economies the most scarce value is human attention, and that's just the interchange format of this market.
I think you're dead on the money there, if you'll pardon the pun. The problem is that whilst each page does have a value in terms of human attention, its value is not obvious to potential buyers. Like walking round a shop where nothing is priced - you don't find out until you've already contracted to buy the thing.
In most real markets it is much easier to find equilibrium because if something is underpriced a single agent can buy huge quantities and the price will adjust. Hyperlinking does something along these lines, but is a far more hit-and-miss affair (IMO).
Of course/. does have it's own pricing mechanism, although it's clearly not the optimal solution. Perhaps something along those lines might be useful for wikipedia though.
When program X exits, does it's deallocated heap memory become available to a lucky program who asks for some space and gets given the same address? Does does the OS overwrite it before passing it on to the next program or is this the task of the writer of program X?
Bull. You can become rich without being initially rich. You just have to work hard at the right things. If you work hard flipping burgers you will end up poor. If you work hard cleaning buildings you will end up poor. If you work hard at school, work hard on a well chosen university course based on what you are good at and what there is commercial demand for, you have a very good chance of ending up rich.
If you work hard at complaining about how unfair life is on slashdot then no, you will probably not be someone who becomes rich.
Of course there is more to life than money. If you want to spend your time doing something that is more directly beneficial to other people than is possible in a business setting (e.g. OSS, traditional charity work) then good for you. If you want to pursue your passion then that's fine too. But don't then claim it's impossible for the poor to become rich.
Yes maybe it is not linux's fault. But a customer isn't going to give a f*** who's fault it is, they care about whether the fault is likely to happen again. Since the codebases for sap on windows and sap on unix are different, it's entirely possible that it would crash on one and not the other. If you're running it on linux and it keeps crashing it's entirely reasonable to ditch linux for windows rather then spend a fortune finding out what is wrong with the (closed) sap-linux code.
3. Don't do overtimes unless it's happening at most once a week and it's paid.
pffft. That's advice for a salaried worker-bea. If you've got an interesting job you'll find you actually want to think about it when you leave. If there's a good chance to be promoted to a better job in the company then it makes sense to do extra work to secure it. If you're in a small startup being paid in stock it makes sense to put in serious overtime to get product X out the door before your competitor. If you're a researcher you're generally quite happy to be thinking about your research outside the office - that's where the breakthroughs happen.
Different people approach their life in different ways, but for me I know that if I'm resenting doing overtime then I definitely have the wrong job.
As it happens I do like exploring new things; I am a researcher in theoretical physics. It's just that there are only 24 hours in a day and i'd rather spend my time exploring possible solutions to quantum gravity than ip masquerading. If I have time left over I'd like to use it to create a webpage for my families photos and get a mythtv setup going on a mini-itx system rather than figuring out why the iptables aren't giving the desired result. I mean, it's not really *that* exciting a task.
But I appreciate your advice, I can see it came from the heart.
You mention configuring the network. It's off topic (so mod me down) but I was just wondering if you can set up nat (masquerading) in kubuntu without have to touch the terminal. I've tried to set up my home network with my always-on linux box dishing out the internet, but it took so long to work out how to do it in ubuntu that it's probably going to be easier to just shell out £30 for a router.
I was especially disappointed since i though that linux would really excel in this sort of environment, and ubuntu would make it easy to do. Does kubuntu improve on this?
If I had mod points parent would be getting +1 Funny.
New Scientist articles are continually overhyping 'the next great breakthrough' by some unknown physicist at some unknown university in some as yet unpublished paper. It is well known to anybody above phd level that these are the physics equivalent of vapourware, and yet it seems New Scientist are either unaware or don't care about this. On the plus side, these articles are usually fairly easy to weed out, even if you don't have any specialist knowledge in the subject. For example, if the strapline is something like "Could Einstein Be Wrong?" with some random computer generated picture of nothing in particular then you have a very good candidate.
A big part of the concern is for the vitality of our culture, our permission to create. Creation does not normally happen in a vacuum, indeed, that is the exception. You create in the context of all that went before. Without permission to be inspired by the past, the future is bleak indeed.
But one does have permission to improve open source software. One does have permission to modify wikimedia articles. One also has very easy access to the most important media channel of all - the internet.
The idea that it is impossible to create culture only by remixing old works is ridiculous. Look back through history and tell me how many classic pieces of music or literature would have been infringing on someone else's copyright. Yes, they took ideas from other people, but that is not prohibited now. It certainly has nothing to do with copyright expiration being 2, 20 or 200 years.
That only priveleged big companies are allowed to create is a statement of yesterdays world when the distribution channels were 'owned' by big business. Even then it was only partially true and as bloggers everywhere will tell you: now it is downright false.
Obviously I'm just a pleb that know's nothing, but it does seem that Lessig is really missing the big picture. Perhaps he is right that public domain as technically defined is slowly becoming rarer and rarer. But on the other hand the amount of information and media that is semi-free is growing at a rate that would be absolutely unbelievable to someone living 30 years ago.
Yes, Linus and others own the copyright to Linux and hence it's not strictly public domain, but it is obviously more free than something with a traditional copyright that you might have seen 20 years ago (eg Unix).
Yes, music is still heavily copyrighted and clearly not public domain, but being able to go to iTunes or Amazon or HMV and listen to almost any track in the world for free (as in beer) gives me a lot more freedom than the small local music store with a few thousand vinyls did in 1980.
Yes, books are still copyrighted, but when you can go to the O'Reilly website and read many of their books online for free (again, as in beer) I feel much better off than when I was browsing round the local bookstore with the store clerk reminding me that "this is not a lending library".
Wikipedia AFAIK is not in the public domain; does its existence leave me better or worse off?
It really irritates me that even though information is more widely distributed and more accessible than ever before, and even though we're going through the biggest information revolution in history (or at least comparable with the invention of paper and the invention of the printing press), some people still whinge and make apocalyptic prophesies.
To Lessig and/. Editors: Please get a reality check.
Brainless mammoths, presumably. Personally I don't know why they would bother to grow them anyway, it's already established scientific fact that they will escape their cages after power failure and start eating people. Those damned/. editors; clueless.
I used a similar service, which was free for the first few months, called Go2Call. This was in 1999 or perhaps 2000. I noticed there was a slight latency problem, but no worse than an intercontinental call over traditional phone lines.
Personally I'm astonished that everybody's making a fuss over VoIP now when it's been around for at least 5 years. I can see it wasn't practical for mainstream use because not enough ppl had broadband, but the software and hardware (at least at the server end) is really not new.
OK yes in general you can infer things from what types of comments are used and what aren't, but in this case it seemed more the other way round. The tone of the article (to me) was:
Schlumberger, this great company with lots of researchers, has created autonomous democratic associations within itself and is now gaining from this strategy. Other [lesser] companies may have some [irrational] fear about it though.
I pretty much fully agree with what GP said. As much as I hate the/. moderators who can't distinguish between insight and biased ranting, I keep coming back.
What I'm looking for is a tech based community site like slashdot, but one that doesn't seem as though Michael Moore is the moderator in chief.
To be fair the WSJ was quoting a consultant who said that some other companies are scared of the idea. It wasn't WSJ's fear, nor even the consultants fear. So I don't think you can really infer anything about how the WSJ views democracy from this article.
Don't tell me that the people doing the exploiting are "offering an alternative" to poverty.
Well, it seems almost trivially correct that they are offering an alternative to poverty. I mean, looking at the definitions of the word, i really don't see how you could argue otherwise.
alternative 1. The choice between two mutually exclusive possibilities.
offer 1. To present for acceptance or rejection;
Taken from dictionary.com.
And finally, do you have any evidence to support your claim that the outsourcing of computer programming or call centres to India is "prolonging the poverty"?
Perhaps, but it is obviously not the employer who is doing the enslaving part, it is some other external factor. The employer isn't the one giving the downside, only the upside.
So if you want to complain about poverty (which is what you are actually talking about, but dressing it up in more emotive words) then do so, but don't blame the very people who are offering an alternative. I'm sure they're not offering the alternative for any moral reasons, but that doesn't mean that it is a priori a bad thing.
...and 1b) Anything you 'know' about the company or the market that has been found in less than an hours dedicated research (especially if that research is done through a public search engine) will definitely already have been taken into account by the current share price.
Slashdot Mirror
You sound someone with an agenda...
Anyway, do you have a reference for this allegation. And I mean the allegation that a French minister said that the people shouldn't have been allowed to see the EU Constitution?
Sovereign nations never like being beholden to outsiders. If you don't believe this then look at the middle east.
Whilst it might be true that it is a cloaked attempt to stifle free speech (although you have to wonder why the EU isn't doing it in the non-internet domain already), it is far far from obvious.
And finally, whilst it may be true that the free speech of americans is protected under US law, it is (I assume) not true that the law protects the freedom of anyone else. Especially if you're French ;-)
* By disconnect, I do of course mean refuse to resolve names. From a practical point of view (and over small timescales) this comes down to the same thing. I think.
- the words 'word' and 'processing' have nothing to do pictures - so you should remove all picture embedding facilities from OOo and MS Word.
- the word 'computer' means a device that performs high speed mathematical or logical operations. obviously that has nothing to do with music, so the very idea that people would want to listen to music on their computer is absurd.
- the word 'concert' is to do with a musical performance. clearly there is no need to include dancing or lighting in this. most pop bands must be pretty stupid to not realise this.
In short, make what people want, not what a dictionary tells you to.I don't know whether it's the fault of nvidia, xorg, linux, fedora (e.g. it's fine on windows), gecko or firefox, but I do know that it is very annoying and is the only reason I went to the trouble of installing an adblocking extension.
According to BW, the turnover is around 15% / year. I think this means an average lifespan of the order 7 years.
Like me. As it happens BillG emailed me yesterday asking if i could call a few more linux fans zealots.
I think you're dead on the money there, if you'll pardon the pun. The problem is that whilst each page does have a value in terms of human attention, its value is not obvious to potential buyers. Like walking round a shop where nothing is priced - you don't find out until you've already contracted to buy the thing.
In most real markets it is much easier to find equilibrium because if something is underpriced a single agent can buy huge quantities and the price will adjust. Hyperlinking does something along these lines, but is a far more hit-and-miss affair (IMO).
Of course /. does have it's own pricing mechanism, although it's clearly not the optimal solution. Perhaps something along those lines might be useful for wikipedia though.
When program X exits, does it's deallocated heap memory become available to a lucky program who asks for some space and gets given the same address? Does does the OS overwrite it before passing it on to the next program or is this the task of the writer of program X?
If you work hard at complaining about how unfair life is on slashdot then no, you will probably not be someone who becomes rich.
Of course there is more to life than money. If you want to spend your time doing something that is more directly beneficial to other people than is possible in a business setting (e.g. OSS, traditional charity work) then good for you. If you want to pursue your passion then that's fine too. But don't then claim it's impossible for the poor to become rich.
Yes maybe it is not linux's fault. But a customer isn't going to give a f*** who's fault it is, they care about whether the fault is likely to happen again. Since the codebases for sap on windows and sap on unix are different, it's entirely possible that it would crash on one and not the other. If you're running it on linux and it keeps crashing it's entirely reasonable to ditch linux for windows rather then spend a fortune finding out what is wrong with the (closed) sap-linux code.
3. Don't do overtimes unless it's happening at most once a week and it's paid.
pffft. That's advice for a salaried worker-bea. If you've got an interesting job you'll find you actually want to think about it when you leave. If there's a good chance to be promoted to a better job in the company then it makes sense to do extra work to secure it. If you're in a small startup being paid in stock it makes sense to put in serious overtime to get product X out the door before your competitor. If you're a researcher you're generally quite happy to be thinking about your research outside the office - that's where the breakthroughs happen.
Different people approach their life in different ways, but for me I know that if I'm resenting doing overtime then I definitely have the wrong job.
But I appreciate your advice, I can see it came from the heart.
I was especially disappointed since i though that linux would really excel in this sort of environment, and ubuntu would make it easy to do. Does kubuntu improve on this?
New Scientist articles are continually overhyping 'the next great breakthrough' by some unknown physicist at some unknown university in some as yet unpublished paper. It is well known to anybody above phd level that these are the physics equivalent of vapourware, and yet it seems New Scientist are either unaware or don't care about this. On the plus side, these articles are usually fairly easy to weed out, even if you don't have any specialist knowledge in the subject. For example, if the strapline is something like "Could Einstein Be Wrong?" with some random computer generated picture of nothing in particular then you have a very good candidate.
But one does have permission to improve open source software. One does have permission to modify wikimedia articles. One also has very easy access to the most important media channel of all - the internet.
The idea that it is impossible to create culture only by remixing old works is ridiculous. Look back through history and tell me how many classic pieces of music or literature would have been infringing on someone else's copyright. Yes, they took ideas from other people, but that is not prohibited now. It certainly has nothing to do with copyright expiration being 2, 20 or 200 years.
That only priveleged big companies are allowed to create is a statement of yesterdays world when the distribution channels were 'owned' by big business. Even then it was only partially true and as bloggers everywhere will tell you: now it is downright false.
Yes, Linus and others own the copyright to Linux and hence it's not strictly public domain, but it is obviously more free than something with a traditional copyright that you might have seen 20 years ago (eg Unix).
Yes, music is still heavily copyrighted and clearly not public domain, but being able to go to iTunes or Amazon or HMV and listen to almost any track in the world for free (as in beer) gives me a lot more freedom than the small local music store with a few thousand vinyls did in 1980.
Yes, books are still copyrighted, but when you can go to the O'Reilly website and read many of their books online for free (again, as in beer) I feel much better off than when I was browsing round the local bookstore with the store clerk reminding me that "this is not a lending library".
Wikipedia AFAIK is not in the public domain; does its existence leave me better or worse off?
It really irritates me that even though information is more widely distributed and more accessible than ever before, and even though we're going through the biggest information revolution in history (or at least comparable with the invention of paper and the invention of the printing press), some people still whinge and make apocalyptic prophesies.
To Lessig and /. Editors: Please get a reality check.
Brainless mammoths, presumably. Personally I don't know why they would bother to grow them anyway, it's already established scientific fact that they will escape their cages after power failure and start eating people. Those damned /. editors; clueless.
Personally I'm astonished that everybody's making a fuss over VoIP now when it's been around for at least 5 years. I can see it wasn't practical for mainstream use because not enough ppl had broadband, but the software and hardware (at least at the server end) is really not new.
Schlumberger, this great company with lots of researchers, has created autonomous democratic associations within itself and is now gaining from this strategy. Other [lesser] companies may have some [irrational] fear about it though.
So, IMO, it was the other way round.
What I'm looking for is a tech based community site like slashdot, but one that doesn't seem as though Michael Moore is the moderator in chief.
Any ideas?
To be fair the WSJ was quoting a consultant who said that some other companies are scared of the idea. It wasn't WSJ's fear, nor even the consultants fear. So I don't think you can really infer anything about how the WSJ views democracy from this article.
Well, it seems almost trivially correct that they are offering an alternative to poverty. I mean, looking at the definitions of the word, i really don't see how you could argue otherwise.
alternative 1. The choice between two mutually exclusive possibilities.
offer 1. To present for acceptance or rejection; Taken from dictionary.com.
And finally, do you have any evidence to support your claim that the outsourcing of computer programming or call centres to India is "prolonging the poverty"?
So if you want to complain about poverty (which is what you are actually talking about, but dressing it up in more emotive words) then do so, but don't blame the very people who are offering an alternative. I'm sure they're not offering the alternative for any moral reasons, but that doesn't mean that it is a priori a bad thing.
...and 1b) Anything you 'know' about the company or the market that has been found in less than an hours dedicated research (especially if that research is done through a public search engine) will definitely already have been taken into account by the current share price.