I doubt they'd be allowed 15 minutes of commercials in an hour, certainly not on the main 2 channels. The 3 main commercial terrestrial channels are very heavily regulated when it comes to the amount of commercials they can air (though on things like movies, they can average them out, so you might get a lot of adverts at the beginning of a film and fewer near the end). Even the non-terrestrial channels have some regulation, which is why if you look closely at the 15 minutes of commercial time to pad out american programmes, a lot of those commercials are for other programmes and are not paid adverts. I would assume that a commercial BBC would be forced to live under the same rules.
I was vaguely aware of some scheme that might happen that would let people in the west buy an OLPC for 300, which would mean I would get 1 and 2 children in the 3rd world would get one each. I was not aware that this had anything to do with pledgebank, I was only aware that some people (whom I assumed to be the people behind OLPC) were connected with the idea. Perhaps it failed because very few people were aware of it's existence (I thought it was something that would happen after the release of the OLPC and so I put off worrying about it till then as I am actually interested in the idea). Seeing as the only concrete reference I have seen is to a slashback article, I'm not surprised it's failed.
I have to ask, were they bringing in Apple 2s and Commodore PETs (as they were back in my day when they first started bringing in computers to the classroom), or something more modern? I am not a teacher, I'm a step-parent, and while I can see some use back then in introducing computers ("ooh look - it's a computer and the way of the future", which it was), I can see a lot more potential use form computers in the classroom now. My son has better access to information than I did at his age - though for him there isn't the same sense of wonder about computers coming from his paternal generation.
Thinking about it, the computer started to become actually useful in high school, as by then they were of some use as DTP had happened and it made the school newspaper a lot easier to make. Still, there was a good 10 years of them being there in school with no good reason. The same can't be said now.
Even better - set it up so people can pay to have their craptastic taste in music played to people visiting their pages. Something like $6-10 a month for a certain amount of songs.
I'd bet that now that big media is getting involved with MySpace, they'll have more than just special exemptions, they'll have their own deals with MySpace and maybe even a private API at some point.
What's going to be interesting is when Big Media and the small bands clash. A few weeks before FX in the UK launched the TV show Brotherhood, they had promos stating that the first episode would be available the week before on myspace.com/brotherhood. I went and checked it out and that page was already taken by some metal band from Texas. Oddly enough enough, the weekend before the episode was supposed to be on MySpace, the promos changed the URL to myspace.com/brotherhooduk and about a week after, the URL changed to a location on FX UK's own website. However, I'm wondering if in future, the small bands might get bumped off when Big Media needs the URL.
The funny thing about the Google/MySpace confusion is that I noticed recently that some of Google's services will now integrate with MySpace (and will flat out mention MySpace, as in post to blog/MySpace buttons). And then there's that Google being the search provider for MySpace.
I really wouldn't be surprised if one day Google takes over the day to day running of MySpace as a service provider for Fox/News International.
That's what I don't get about the post - it seems to give 100% of the credit to Bush and completely ignores the fact that congress actually made the law. I know plenty of people have an axe to grind with the president, but they really should be blaming congress first for coming up with the bad legislation in the first place.
They weren't necessarily more stable, as there would have been far fewer people upgrading to edgy from dapper before the final release than after. As there are now more people upgrading, people will now be finding the bugs that weren't found before.
In addition, no doubt the computers will record everything permanently so that criminals can later be identified.
I doubt it would be permanent as there's really little point. The vast majority of recorded data would be of innocent people and therefore of no use storing for an extended period. So other than a window that would give time for a crime to come to light and investigators to investigate (say 4 - 8 weeks) any footage outside of that window could be safely deleted in the knowledge that it is probably of little value (except, I suppose, if you are a defendant and trying to prove an alibi).
I live in the UK so I'm fairly desensitized to surveillance cameras, but I somehow doubt much of the footage taken is ever kept for that long. For example, I doubt Tesco really need to keep all the footage (from at least 10 or so cameras) of me filling up my car with petrol last night.
I found this line interesting "He was especially critical of UK's government's ID card scheme -- a scheme he felt would not achieve one of its possible objectives of making borders more secure.". If anything, the ID card scheme will make the borders less secure, as the excuse used to keep the UK out of the Schengen Agreement would no longer exist and there would therefore no longer be any need to retain border controls with the rest of the EU.
Bullshit. You're argument basically is "people on slashdot don't know jack about politics, so they should shut up about politics". If that's the case, then what is the point of democracy? You're coments about not knowing the gross GDP within an order of magnitude could also be levelled at politicians (as that is the sort of statisic that civil servants are for, not politicians). Why not just leave it all to a "competent" civil service and be done with the waste of money that is the whole elected government?
Everyone on slashdot has a right to an opinion on political matters (no matter how screwed up those opions are) and a right to express those opinions. That's one of the points of democracy (which is always held up as the "most perfect"/"least worst" form of government).
Really? A quick search of the google shows that "government" is rarely mentioned in definitions of censorship. The "average" definition implies that censorship is when some form information is suppressed or banned by some group. Censorship by government is just one possible form of censorship.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day MS will start to give the full version of SQL away with a server OS licence. Especially with Oracle moving into the OS business.
I don't really buy the indemnification argument - I'm pretty certain that indemnification is a fairly new concept in proprietary software as well. If anything businesses would be more at risk from proprietary software, as proprietary developers might be emboldened through "security through obscurity" and willfully include tainted code in their products.
I don't think people ever bought software while thinking about the possibility of getting sued over third party IP claims, not because of some indemnification clause in some contract, but because the idea is a bit absurd - it would be like Polaroid suing everyone who bought a Kodak Instamatic instead of just suing Kodak because the Instamatic violated Polaroid's patents.
Then why are most recreational drugs illegal? If no one is going to pass laws that will put their fellow rich people behind bars, then you would think coke would be legalized.
I don't think it was ever "all the free test systems that I can use" - I seem to recall that there was a 10 concurrent install limit (ie, I could have up to 10 SQL servers running on my universal licence) at least form most things. I haven't actually looked that hard at what the current equivalent of universal has (I've got it, but only to support legacy systems, new stuff is generally developed in python or java and deployed on either Debian or Ubuntu Server), however I do remeber that MSDN is now an exercise in confusion marketing (I think there are now at least a half dozen different types of subscription and we went with the one that appeared to be closest to universal for the least cost).
But why are even precious metals that "precious"? I could see that there is some value to them from thier use in making things, but I don't understand the whole "buying gold bullion and hordeing it" thing. While I understand that there is a finite supply, most (all?) metal is recycleable, and there has got to be other places in the solar system that have precious metals, so the supply can't be that small, even if a large amount of any particular metal is currently expensive to get at.
It doesn't actually explain why you'll always be alone - you could accept that women are (at least in general) evil pyscopaths and "put up with it". Women aren't the "complex creatures men will never understand" - they're actually easily understandable with some study, though the conclusions you will draw about them (such as the jealousy rule you've mentioned) are not pleasant.
However, if you do decide to try your luck and not be alone, do not, under any circumstances, trust her. Given the right set of circumstances, she will betray you, no matter how much "love" is involved in your relationship or how big the diamond (natural or synthetic) you bought her is. Do not believe the propaganda about "trust in a relationship", "jealosy is a bad thing" (it's your first line of defense), "women don't usually cheat" (yes, yes they do - and in general, they get more opprotunity to cheat than men) or any of the other lies that paint women in a better light than they deserve.
As soon as you put a price on it, women will think you're buying them.
Which is exactly what you're doing. And I do not for a second believe that women are not aware of this. They may never admit it, but I am certain at some level they are aware of this and use it to thier advantage.
Some women will find value in ethical behaviour, as it shows that you at least appear to be caring, so the "it's more ethical" line may work with them. Others won't find as much value in ethical behaviour, so for them only a "blood" diamond will do.
run the fuck away from narcissistic psychopath women in the first place
And we can find these non psychopaths where? Maybe it's just me, but every woman I have ever met (no, I don't just mean dated, I'm including every woman I've had reason to know - girlfriends, friends, colleagues, neighbours, even my mother) is a complete psychopath. Some of them didn't seem that way to begin with, but once the surface sanity is scratched then Bingo! nutbar alert.
I actually prefer the ones that I know are crazy from the get go as there are fewer surprises.
I hope not. I'm really starting to get "ethical burnout" from all the ethical hype that has been occuring recently. Now, whenever I hear the term ethical I immediatly think of the South Park episode where everyone switches over to hybrid cars and starts loving the smell of thier own farts.
A little bit of searching brings Abnet - ABNet uses a Java Communications server with Javascript to turn a single-user VRML / X3D world into a Multi-user Virtual World environment. With a BSD style licence.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt they'd be allowed 15 minutes of commercials in an hour, certainly not on the main 2 channels. The 3 main commercial terrestrial channels are very heavily regulated when it comes to the amount of commercials they can air (though on things like movies, they can average them out, so you might get a lot of adverts at the beginning of a film and fewer near the end). Even the non-terrestrial channels have some regulation, which is why if you look closely at the 15 minutes of commercial time to pad out american programmes, a lot of those commercials are for other programmes and are not paid adverts. I would assume that a commercial BBC would be forced to live under the same rules.
I was vaguely aware of some scheme that might happen that would let people in the west buy an OLPC for 300, which would mean I would get 1 and 2 children in the 3rd world would get one each. I was not aware that this had anything to do with pledgebank, I was only aware that some people (whom I assumed to be the people behind OLPC) were connected with the idea. Perhaps it failed because very few people were aware of it's existence (I thought it was something that would happen after the release of the OLPC and so I put off worrying about it till then as I am actually interested in the idea). Seeing as the only concrete reference I have seen is to a slashback article, I'm not surprised it's failed.
I have to ask, were they bringing in Apple 2s and Commodore PETs (as they were back in my day when they first started bringing in computers to the classroom), or something more modern? I am not a teacher, I'm a step-parent, and while I can see some use back then in introducing computers ("ooh look - it's a computer and the way of the future", which it was), I can see a lot more potential use form computers in the classroom now. My son has better access to information than I did at his age - though for him there isn't the same sense of wonder about computers coming from his paternal generation.
Thinking about it, the computer started to become actually useful in high school, as by then they were of some use as DTP had happened and it made the school newspaper a lot easier to make. Still, there was a good 10 years of them being there in school with no good reason. The same can't be said now.
Even better - set it up so people can pay to have their craptastic taste in music played to people visiting their pages. Something like $6-10 a month for a certain amount of songs.
I'd bet that now that big media is getting involved with MySpace, they'll have more than just special exemptions, they'll have their own deals with MySpace and maybe even a private API at some point.
What's going to be interesting is when Big Media and the small bands clash. A few weeks before FX in the UK launched the TV show Brotherhood, they had promos stating that the first episode would be available the week before on myspace.com/brotherhood. I went and checked it out and that page was already taken by some metal band from Texas. Oddly enough enough, the weekend before the episode was supposed to be on MySpace, the promos changed the URL to myspace.com/brotherhooduk and about a week after, the URL changed to a location on FX UK's own website. However, I'm wondering if in future, the small bands might get bumped off when Big Media needs the URL.
The funny thing about the Google/MySpace confusion is that I noticed recently that some of Google's services will now integrate with MySpace (and will flat out mention MySpace, as in post to blog/MySpace buttons). And then there's that Google being the search provider for MySpace.
I really wouldn't be surprised if one day Google takes over the day to day running of MySpace as a service provider for Fox/News International.
same internet, different tubes.
That's what I don't get about the post - it seems to give 100% of the credit to Bush and completely ignores the fact that congress actually made the law. I know plenty of people have an axe to grind with the president, but they really should be blaming congress first for coming up with the bad legislation in the first place.
They weren't necessarily more stable, as there would have been far fewer people upgrading to edgy from dapper before the final release than after. As there are now more people upgrading, people will now be finding the bugs that weren't found before.
Isn't that just for geo stationary satellites? Wouldn't something like a hamsat be outside of any one country's control?
If life isn't fair then why worry about externalities is in the first place?
In addition, no doubt the computers will record everything permanently so that criminals can later be identified.
I doubt it would be permanent as there's really little point. The vast majority of recorded data would be of innocent people and therefore of no use storing for an extended period. So other than a window that would give time for a crime to come to light and investigators to investigate (say 4 - 8 weeks) any footage outside of that window could be safely deleted in the knowledge that it is probably of little value (except, I suppose, if you are a defendant and trying to prove an alibi).
I live in the UK so I'm fairly desensitized to surveillance cameras, but I somehow doubt much of the footage taken is ever kept for that long. For example, I doubt Tesco really need to keep all the footage (from at least 10 or so cameras) of me filling up my car with petrol last night.
I found this line interesting "He was especially critical of UK's government's ID card scheme -- a scheme he felt would not achieve one of its possible objectives of making borders more secure.". If anything, the ID card scheme will make the borders less secure, as the excuse used to keep the UK out of the Schengen Agreement would no longer exist and there would therefore no longer be any need to retain border controls with the rest of the EU.
Bullshit. You're argument basically is "people on slashdot don't know jack about politics, so they should shut up about politics". If that's the case, then what is the point of democracy? You're coments about not knowing the gross GDP within an order of magnitude could also be levelled at politicians (as that is the sort of statisic that civil servants are for, not politicians). Why not just leave it all to a "competent" civil service and be done with the waste of money that is the whole elected government?
Everyone on slashdot has a right to an opinion on political matters (no matter how screwed up those opions are) and a right to express those opinions. That's one of the points of democracy (which is always held up as the "most perfect"/"least worst" form of government).
Really? A quick search of the google shows that "government" is rarely mentioned in definitions of censorship. The "average" definition implies that censorship is when some form information is suppressed or banned by some group. Censorship by government is just one possible form of censorship.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day MS will start to give the full version of SQL away with a server OS licence. Especially with Oracle moving into the OS business.
I don't really buy the indemnification argument - I'm pretty certain that indemnification is a fairly new concept in proprietary software as well. If anything businesses would be more at risk from proprietary software, as proprietary developers might be emboldened through "security through obscurity" and willfully include tainted code in their products.
I don't think people ever bought software while thinking about the possibility of getting sued over third party IP claims, not because of some indemnification clause in some contract, but because the idea is a bit absurd - it would be like Polaroid suing everyone who bought a Kodak Instamatic instead of just suing Kodak because the Instamatic violated Polaroid's patents.
Then why are most recreational drugs illegal? If no one is going to pass laws that will put their fellow rich people behind bars, then you would think coke would be legalized.
I don't think it was ever "all the free test systems that I can use" - I seem to recall that there was a 10 concurrent install limit (ie, I could have up to 10 SQL servers running on my universal licence) at least form most things. I haven't actually looked that hard at what the current equivalent of universal has (I've got it, but only to support legacy systems, new stuff is generally developed in python or java and deployed on either Debian or Ubuntu Server), however I do remeber that MSDN is now an exercise in confusion marketing (I think there are now at least a half dozen different types of subscription and we went with the one that appeared to be closest to universal for the least cost).
But why are even precious metals that "precious"? I could see that there is some value to them from thier use in making things, but I don't understand the whole "buying gold bullion and hordeing it" thing. While I understand that there is a finite supply, most (all?) metal is recycleable, and there has got to be other places in the solar system that have precious metals, so the supply can't be that small, even if a large amount of any particular metal is currently expensive to get at.
It doesn't actually explain why you'll always be alone - you could accept that women are (at least in general) evil pyscopaths and "put up with it". Women aren't the "complex creatures men will never understand" - they're actually easily understandable with some study, though the conclusions you will draw about them (such as the jealousy rule you've mentioned) are not pleasant.
However, if you do decide to try your luck and not be alone, do not, under any circumstances, trust her. Given the right set of circumstances, she will betray you, no matter how much "love" is involved in your relationship or how big the diamond (natural or synthetic) you bought her is. Do not believe the propaganda about "trust in a relationship", "jealosy is a bad thing" (it's your first line of defense), "women don't usually cheat" (yes, yes they do - and in general, they get more opprotunity to cheat than men) or any of the other lies that paint women in a better light than they deserve.
As soon as you put a price on it, women will think you're buying them.
Which is exactly what you're doing. And I do not for a second believe that women are not aware of this. They may never admit it, but I am certain at some level they are aware of this and use it to thier advantage.
Some women will find value in ethical behaviour, as it shows that you at least appear to be caring, so the "it's more ethical" line may work with them. Others won't find as much value in ethical behaviour, so for them only a "blood" diamond will do.
run the fuck away from narcissistic psychopath women in the first place
And we can find these non psychopaths where? Maybe it's just me, but every woman I have ever met (no, I don't just mean dated, I'm including every woman I've had reason to know - girlfriends, friends, colleagues, neighbours, even my mother) is a complete psychopath. Some of them didn't seem that way to begin with, but once the surface sanity is scratched then Bingo! nutbar alert.
I actually prefer the ones that I know are crazy from the get go as there are fewer surprises.
I hope not. I'm really starting to get "ethical burnout" from all the ethical hype that has been occuring recently. Now, whenever I hear the term ethical I immediatly think of the South Park episode where everyone switches over to hybrid cars and starts loving the smell of thier own farts.
A little bit of searching brings Abnet - ABNet uses a Java Communications server with Javascript to turn a single-user VRML / X3D world into a Multi-user Virtual World environment. With a BSD style licence.
http://kimballsoftware.com/downloads.html