May have been a way to increase the perceived seriousness of the incident. Teenagers scuffling may sound minor if nobody was badly damaged; assault in the commission of a robbery sounds different.
>>extra-marital affairs have a tendency to remove MARRIAGES.
The point is that perhaps you (and I, feeling similarly about my own wife) care as much about the idea of staying married because of genetic factors. No better or worse than saying you tend to have whatever hair and eye color you happen to have because of genetic factors.
So, like a strawberry-shortcake fanatic would have trouble getting along with a strawberry-allergic companion, it's just a matter of making sure people's tastes are compatible.
>>It works. It does precisely the job it was designed to do, and continues to do it at at least the level of ability it originally had...
Agreed 100%. Imagine if the original poster had written the same thing about "people still using buildings from the 1970s", and consider that some of the best-known educational and cultural institutions in the world are housed in buildings that are hundreds of years old.
Just as those old buildings are sometimes more rock-solid than their newer neighbors, some of those old technology systems were built with more attention to stability. When you were running the single computer at the company (or college), you weren't allowed to reboot on every little thing.
Yes, they overreacted. In hindsight.
Unfortunately, security personnel (police, MPs, special forces) have to react in real time with incomplete information. And while they have to be reasonably smart, they're not necessarily the most intellectual crowd. They sometimes have no choice but to jump to conclusions because too late would be . . . too late.
Plus: The student handled this *very* badly. The first time someone asked "What is that thing" she could have said "I'm an MIT student and this is a gadget for a competition" etc. and gotten nothing but advice on being more discreet.
Sorry, from what you've been saying I have to assume you don't know the realities. My brother-in-law is in a local band doing original songs as well as covers, and one of my colleagues plays jazz piano three nights each weekend. All of the musicians I know have fulltime day jobs, because the amount that local places pay for an evening's gig wouldn't cover a day's housing in this area, and if you plan to eat you need even more money. Producing a "concert" means putting up a lot of money up front to rent the hall. When I was a teenager in the 60s that was cheaper; now you need insurance and bonds and stuff, on top of the rent being a lot higher to start with.
So the answer is, No, I don't think people can make a go of it just being paid directly, until they get to some kind of critical mass. Especially today. Maybe that's why the archetypes of the starving artist and the minstrel busking for food are such cliches.
Don't get me wrong - I want to be able to copy my CDs so I can use them in the car, and change them to MP3s for my player, and do other things that should be fair use because I paid for the original CD fair and square. I oppose DRM that tries to make me pay for every format . . . though I did buy CDs of things I already had on vinyl. And the music industry doesn't make music, it makes recordings.
I certainly prefer to buy things directly from musicians where possible. Hell, even if you go to a show, you're paying a middleman - the venue expects a cover, or a rental, or at least good sales of food an drink, and if they don't see it's worthwhile they won't invite that group back, so you can't just show up and listen without spending something.
>>>You can also show your support by funding production....
>>>>>>but that's how the industry counts "votes" for a given product.
>>>Who cares how "the industry" wants to keep track? You don't have to conform to their standards just to get your "vote" counted; if they want to count inaccurately, that's their problem, not yours.
I *do* throw money into buskers' hats. I *do* follow local bands and buy their CDs. That also means I patronize the places they play (that's why the places pay them to play there, after all). And if I like them enough to help them reach a wider audience, which means they can keep creating the music I like, and the way to do that is through radio or distribution by bigger companies already in the business, then I have to try to convince those existing players in "the industry" to listen - and what they listen to most is money.
It's easier than ever for a local niche band to reach the world. But they'll still only reach a little NICHE of the world. And if someone puts up mp3s of all of their stuff, and nobody needs to buy their CDs, then they don't have money to pay their rent. That's why copyright exists.
I already said: there are too many layers of middlemen and the artists don't get enough of the result. Now that you can have a kiosk burn a CD on the spot rather than invest in stockpiling pre-made CDs, the economics should change, except there are already record stores that don't want to die and employees who don't want to be out of work. Buggy-whip manufacturers couldn't legislate against cars; the music business is somehow managing to convince people to legislate against change in their industry.
All of this IS our problem, because they're protecting their turf by changing interpretations of law and diminishing our rights. Most people speed on the highway because it usually seems safe to go faster, but if you get caught you get a ticket; lots of people ignore these laws too because they seem useless, but we should be fighting the laws instead of ignoring them because as they get enforced they will change the way everything works. When everything has DRM because the law has started requiring it, we won't even own our own creations.
Instead of equally faith-based "information wants to be free" dogma, how about realistic responses:
- Using short clips is allowed for reviews, for discussion in educational settings, etc., as long as you are clearly referencing the original work. - Proper attribution and context makes the difference. It is the same as the difference between "quoting" and "plagarizing".
I presume you would acknowledge a difference between reading books and summarizing the knowledge into your own writing, photocopying the books and submitting the pages under your own name, and photocopying someone else's writing and submitting it under your own name. That's what copyright is. The fact that nothing is missing from the copied work, or that a self-written paper is based on CITED references anyway, has nothing to do with the concept that you are taking someone else's work and claiming that you did it.
If you want to release your work under the GPL and allow people to copy it, that's your right; OTOH if you want people to be able to get the money to make movies and shows that you like, you have to show your support for them by buying their results. It's a lot less direct than throwing a dollar into a busker's hat, and there are a lot of middlemen taking a cut, and I'd rather pay the band / director / producer myself and download it, but that's how the industry counts "votes" for a given product. Science fiction fans are mostly technogeeks, and they all know how to copy stuff, so fewer originals sell, so the industry says "Gee, I guess nobody liked this enough to buy it" and stops making it - or at least stops making *quality* stuff and focuses on the magic-wand stuff that people *do* buy.
And maybe there *is* something to it, just like "An Inconvenient Truth". We only have a single generation's worth of experience with exposure to man-made EMF, and maybe there *is* some tipping point when you go beyond broadcast exposure to having each person wearing a bluetooth cellphone (2 frequencies, close to the body) and carrying a wifi device.
We just don't know. It's hard to imagine anyone checking impartially with absolutely no bias. And if one *ignores* the possibility, one is being narrower than the people being called luddites - they didn't say no to computers or networking, just to RF exposure.
I for one haven't found any useful applications I can run prior to mid 90's.
How about Air Traffic Control?
There are so many comments in this thread with the modern viewpoint that anything older than last week is unimportant. Businesses have huge amounts of old data that can't just be invalidated at a whim because it may need to be accessed (legal reporting requirements), and hardware was bought on 20 or 30 year amortization (by law at the time in the telecom industry), so change is a big deal. Heck, even Microsoft's change of "time" from 32 to 64 bits screws up all kinds of compatibility with existing databases and any backups thereof.
Immutable is good sometimes. I have to be able to prove that I'm shipping the same package, with the same components, and only tiny little bug fixes, or my product's certification is worthless and I have to pay a lot of money to get it recertified. You're saying "Just change everything". That works for toys and games, maybe, but not for telecom and medical and other harshly-tested purposes.
"You heard one discussion of possible Linux issues. How many news reports and articles have you heard and seen about big problems with Windows? How many emails have you gotten about viruses? In contrast, how many of those have had *any* effect on our Linux systems? Now, why are you believing this one report of *possible* problems more than you believe in the *real* problems we've already seen on Windows?"
Yes, it takes energy to separate the water. That's not the whole story.
The hydrogen and oxygen don't just re-combine - that would clearly not make up the energy spent - they improve combustion of the diesel fuel. Presumably that improvement more than makes up for the energy spent.
Think: SUPERCHARGER. That also takes energy away from an engine by putting a mechanical load on it, and it's worthwhile because the higher air pressure gives a better fuel burn. Plus, as anyone who watched "Mad Max" knows, you can put an electrical clutch on a supercharger so you're only using it at high speed when that tradeoff is most effective.
As others have noted, truckers and trucking companies are in business to make money, and they wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work on the road. And for everyone whining about how ecology should be the primary issue: Nobody wants to pollute, they're just saving short-term money on prevention. Make NON-pollution cost less and everyone will adopt it in a heartbeat.
The original concept was always space for wires and PIPES for the water-cooling. People think that fluid-cooling is so new and keen; mainframes of the 1960s were water-cooled because nothing else would do. Refrigeration fluids make things cold enough to crack old-fashioned PC boards, and have more condensation besides.
And have it take into account spelling/ slangs/ people who will be famous that haven't occured yet, hence the rules.
Wait a minute - I have to worry about using a name that might become famous for someone else? If I use it first, isn't it their fault for copying my name?
I once met an "Eddie Murphy" significantly older (and paler) than the comedian, who always replied when asked, "No, I'm the real Eddie Murphy, he's an imposter."
This may sound off-topic, but . . . my wife didn't change her name when we got married (and this was way back in the 1970s). It's her name. It's who she was all the time up to that point, and she didn't want to be someone different.
Famous people don't tend to change their names, because name recognition is one of their assets (with a few notable exceptions like the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As, whose name change was an ongoing publicity bit). Even if you *don't* have publicity invested in your name, it's YOURS. And online, where text is all we have, it may be the only way people know you. In the real world, changing names usually has nasty connotations like "alias" and "evasion".
So, while I understand your position that he didn't lose anything because he didn't lose the character and assets, I stand by my assertion that there should be a time window for active validation if they're going to insist on enforcing name standards, and if nobody objected all this time it's a little late to change now.
If they're going to stand on the letter of the rules, they should be scanning names all the time for such problems so they can tell someone to change it *before* investing time in the character. Shouldn't be too hard to do on an automated basis as soon as a name is created, or within a reasonable time window. Booting someone after months of gameplay because a particular GM just happens to notice something he/she happens to dislike seems unfair, and failing to communicate about it afterwards seems impolite to obnoxious.
Following this thought, I believe the same would apply to a motor home, or anything else with a door. Why should there be any confusion about "historical legal theories to grapple with new and previously unforeseen contexts" when there are such strong parallels in the contexts?
The shuttle was sold on the promise of routine, cheap, quick flights to space...
Yes, and it was also supposed to last for a specified amount of time and number of flights. Those have been exceeded.
Part of the problem is NASA's "everything is programmed" attitude. They have to script potty breaks. Can you imagine NASA ground control instructing someone changing a flat tire?
If the municipal service is being done in place of upgrading all of the radios in town trucks (garbage, parks, school-grounds, etc.) and emergency services vehicles, and incidentally giving them all access to email and other communications, the benefit to everyone else is just gravy.
The goal with any such service is to make it cheap enough that it's not worth metering, and ubiquitous enough that it can be relied on. This is in direct contrast to the goal of any private company, which is to make the highest profit possible. The people who make hardware know that once the hardware is in place it runs for pennies worth of electricity with minimal attention, so they're concentrating on getting buy-in and build-out; it's the people who hope to make money renting out a service who are trying to block things.
Of course M$ would love to see someone run Windows on a Mac. I expect a triumphant press release about how "Even Mac buyers switch to Windows!" the minute a copy of Windows phones home to authenticate or update with the computer ID.
Hell, Windows (or any system) could have been better from the start. The entire PC world threw away all of the accumulated knowledge of the mainframe world, thinking it was too expensive and not looking forward to the degree of integration to come. IBM had VM/CMS for years; Multics was invented in the 50s, for crying out loud! They made virtual machines and dynamic loading and layered security work with stone knives and bearskins!
Odds are, Apple will demonstrate Windows on a Mac - as a subsystem, just "because we can", while running widgets in overlapping windows, and daring M$ to do the reverse.
Who ever says it's compatible with Windows? Making it ever-so-slightly incompatible would be easier because it's not just legacy-free, it's a fresh start. They'd want to use commodity parts without having to license Microsoft's hardware spec.
Watch the speech. Jobs didn't say he had OSX running on a PC, he said he had OSX running on an Intel-processor platform. Right now it's a Pentium-as-we-know-it, it may or may not be by the time they ship systems. And he didn't say that Windows would run on it natively, either.
Using commodity memory, bus,parts, etc. they get the price down comparable to a PC, removing one of the acceptance obstacles.
This could work. I hope so. I want my Intel stock back up where it was when they laid me off.
Slashdot Mirror
May have been a way to increase the perceived seriousness of the incident. Teenagers scuffling may sound minor if nobody was badly damaged; assault in the commission of a robbery sounds different.
The point is that perhaps you (and I, feeling similarly about my own wife) care as much about the idea of staying married because of genetic factors. No better or worse than saying you tend to have whatever hair and eye color you happen to have because of genetic factors.
So, like a strawberry-shortcake fanatic would have trouble getting along with a strawberry-allergic companion, it's just a matter of making sure people's tastes are compatible.
>>It works. It does precisely the job it was designed to do, and continues to do it at at least the level of ability it originally had...
Agreed 100%. Imagine if the original poster had written the same thing about "people still using buildings from the 1970s", and consider that some of the best-known educational and cultural institutions in the world are housed in buildings that are hundreds of years old.
Just as those old buildings are sometimes more rock-solid than their newer neighbors, some of those old technology systems were built with more attention to stability. When you were running the single computer at the company (or college), you weren't allowed to reboot on every little thing.
With an attitude like that, how will we ever get to a Bolo Triumphant Mark XXVIII with multi-megaton-per-second firepower?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(self-aware_tank)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_Marks_technical_data
Yes, they overreacted. In hindsight. Unfortunately, security personnel (police, MPs, special forces) have to react in real time with incomplete information. And while they have to be reasonably smart, they're not necessarily the most intellectual crowd. They sometimes have no choice but to jump to conclusions because too late would be . . . too late. Plus: The student handled this *very* badly. The first time someone asked "What is that thing" she could have said "I'm an MIT student and this is a gadget for a competition" etc. and gotten nothing but advice on being more discreet.
Sorry, from what you've been saying I have to assume you don't know the realities. My brother-in-law is in a local band doing original songs as well as covers, and one of my colleagues plays jazz piano three nights each weekend. All of the musicians I know have fulltime day jobs, because the amount that local places pay for an evening's gig wouldn't cover a day's housing in this area, and if you plan to eat you need even more money. Producing a "concert" means putting up a lot of money up front to rent the hall. When I was a teenager in the 60s that was cheaper; now you need insurance and bonds and stuff, on top of the rent being a lot higher to start with.
So the answer is, No, I don't think people can make a go of it just being paid directly, until they get to some kind of critical mass. Especially today. Maybe that's why the archetypes of the starving artist and the minstrel busking for food are such cliches.
Don't get me wrong - I want to be able to copy my CDs so I can use them in the car, and change them to MP3s for my player, and do other things that should be fair use because I paid for the original CD fair and square. I oppose DRM that tries to make me pay for every format . . . though I did buy CDs of things I already had on vinyl. And the music industry doesn't make music, it makes recordings.
I certainly prefer to buy things directly from musicians where possible. Hell, even if you go to a show, you're paying a middleman - the venue expects a cover, or a rental, or at least good sales of food an drink, and if they don't see it's worthwhile they won't invite that group back, so you can't just show up and listen without spending something.
>>>You can also show your support by funding production. ...
>>>>>>but that's how the industry counts "votes" for a given product.
>>>Who cares how "the industry" wants to keep track? You don't have to conform to their standards just to get your "vote" counted; if they want to count inaccurately, that's their problem, not yours.
I *do* throw money into buskers' hats. I *do* follow local bands and buy their CDs. That also means I patronize the places they play (that's why the places pay them to play there, after all). And if I like them enough to help them reach a wider audience, which means they can keep creating the music I like, and the way to do that is through radio or distribution by bigger companies already in the business, then I have to try to convince those existing players in "the industry" to listen - and what they listen to most is money.
It's easier than ever for a local niche band to reach the world. But they'll still only reach a little NICHE of the world. And if someone puts up mp3s of all of their stuff, and nobody needs to buy their CDs, then they don't have money to pay their rent. That's why copyright exists.
I already said: there are too many layers of middlemen and the artists don't get enough of the result. Now that you can have a kiosk burn a CD on the spot rather than invest in stockpiling pre-made CDs, the economics should change, except there are already record stores that don't want to die and employees who don't want to be out of work. Buggy-whip manufacturers couldn't legislate against cars; the music business is somehow managing to convince people to legislate against change in their industry.
All of this IS our problem, because they're protecting their turf by changing interpretations of law and diminishing our rights. Most people speed on the highway because it usually seems safe to go faster, but if you get caught you get a ticket; lots of people ignore these laws too because they seem useless, but we should be fighting the laws instead of ignoring them because as they get enforced they will change the way everything works. When everything has DRM because the law has started requiring it, we won't even own our own creations.
Instead of equally faith-based "information wants to be free" dogma, how about realistic responses:
- Using short clips is allowed for reviews, for discussion in educational settings, etc., as long as you are clearly referencing the original work.
- Proper attribution and context makes the difference. It is the same as the difference between "quoting" and "plagarizing".
I presume you would acknowledge a difference between reading books and summarizing the knowledge into your own writing, photocopying the books and submitting the pages under your own name, and photocopying someone else's writing and submitting it under your own name. That's what copyright is. The fact that nothing is missing from the copied work, or that a self-written paper is based on CITED references anyway, has nothing to do with the concept that you are taking someone else's work and claiming that you did it.
If you want to release your work under the GPL and allow people to copy it, that's your right; OTOH if you want people to be able to get the money to make movies and shows that you like, you have to show your support for them by buying their results. It's a lot less direct than throwing a dollar into a busker's hat, and there are a lot of middlemen taking a cut, and I'd rather pay the band / director / producer myself and download it, but that's how the industry counts "votes" for a given product. Science fiction fans are mostly technogeeks, and they all know how to copy stuff, so fewer originals sell, so the industry says "Gee, I guess nobody liked this enough to buy it" and stops making it - or at least stops making *quality* stuff and focuses on the magic-wand stuff that people *do* buy.
And maybe there *is* something to it, just like "An Inconvenient Truth". We only have a single generation's worth of experience with exposure to man-made EMF, and maybe there *is* some tipping point when you go beyond broadcast exposure to having each person wearing a bluetooth cellphone (2 frequencies, close to the body) and carrying a wifi device.
We just don't know. It's hard to imagine anyone checking impartially with absolutely no bias. And if one *ignores* the possibility, one is being narrower than the people being called luddites - they didn't say no to computers or networking, just to RF exposure.
I for one haven't found any useful applications I can run prior to mid 90's.
How about Air Traffic Control?
There are so many comments in this thread with the modern viewpoint that anything older than last week is unimportant. Businesses have huge amounts of old data that can't just be invalidated at a whim because it may need to be accessed (legal reporting requirements), and hardware was bought on 20 or 30 year amortization (by law at the time in the telecom industry), so change is a big deal. Heck, even Microsoft's change of "time" from 32 to 64 bits screws up all kinds of compatibility with existing databases and any backups thereof.
Immutable is good sometimes. I have to be able to prove that I'm shipping the same package, with the same components, and only tiny little bug fixes, or my product's certification is worthless and I have to pay a lot of money to get it recertified. You're saying "Just change everything". That works for toys and games, maybe, but not for telecom and medical and other harshly-tested purposes.
Ever hear of a little thing called Morse code?
Oooh, how about dialing digits using pulses? But I suppose those pulses are more consistent. Varying pulses are *completely* different.
"You heard one discussion of possible Linux issues. How many news reports and articles have you heard and seen about big problems with Windows? How many emails have you gotten about viruses? In contrast, how many of those have had *any* effect on our Linux systems? Now, why are you believing this one report of *possible* problems more than you believe in the *real* problems we've already seen on Windows?"
No, we aren't. They're not powering the truck *only* off the separated water. Read a bunch of other posts.
Yes, it takes energy to separate the water. That's not the whole story.
The hydrogen and oxygen don't just re-combine - that would clearly not make up the energy spent - they improve combustion of the diesel fuel. Presumably that improvement more than makes up for the energy spent.
Think: SUPERCHARGER. That also takes energy away from an engine by putting a mechanical load on it, and it's worthwhile because the higher air pressure gives a better fuel burn. Plus, as anyone who watched "Mad Max" knows, you can put an electrical clutch on a supercharger so you're only using it at high speed when that tradeoff is most effective.
As others have noted, truckers and trucking companies are in business to make money, and they wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work on the road. And for everyone whining about how ecology should be the primary issue: Nobody wants to pollute, they're just saving short-term money on prevention. Make NON-pollution cost less and everyone will adopt it in a heartbeat.
The original concept was always space for wires and PIPES for the water-cooling. People think that fluid-cooling is so new and keen; mainframes of the 1960s were water-cooled because nothing else would do. Refrigeration fluids make things cold enough to crack old-fashioned PC boards, and have more condensation besides.
And have it take into account spelling/ slangs/ people who will be famous that haven't occured yet, hence the rules.
Wait a minute - I have to worry about using a name that might become famous for someone else? If I use it first, isn't it their fault for copying my name?
I once met an "Eddie Murphy" significantly older (and paler) than the comedian, who always replied when asked, "No, I'm the real Eddie Murphy, he's an imposter."
>>His dumb name goes.
This may sound off-topic, but . . . my wife didn't change her name when we got married (and this was way back in the 1970s). It's her name. It's who she was all the time up to that point, and she didn't want to be someone different.
Famous people don't tend to change their names, because name recognition is one of their assets (with a few notable exceptions like the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As, whose name change was an ongoing publicity bit). Even if you *don't* have publicity invested in your name, it's YOURS. And online, where text is all we have, it may be the only way people know you. In the real world, changing names usually has nasty connotations like "alias" and "evasion".
So, while I understand your position that he didn't lose anything because he didn't lose the character and assets, I stand by my assertion that there should be a time window for active validation if they're going to insist on enforcing name standards, and if nobody objected all this time it's a little late to change now.
If they're going to stand on the letter of the rules, they should be scanning names all the time for such problems so they can tell someone to change it *before* investing time in the character. Shouldn't be too hard to do on an automated basis as soon as a name is created, or within a reasonable time window. Booting someone after months of gameplay because a particular GM just happens to notice something he/she happens to dislike seems unfair, and failing to communicate about it afterwards seems impolite to obnoxious.
Following this thought, I believe the same would apply to a motor home, or anything else with a door. Why should there be any confusion about "historical legal theories to grapple with new and previously unforeseen contexts" when there are such strong parallels in the contexts?
The shuttle was sold on the promise of routine, cheap, quick flights to space...
Yes, and it was also supposed to last for a specified amount of time and number of flights. Those have been exceeded.
Part of the problem is NASA's "everything is programmed" attitude. They have to script potty breaks. Can you imagine NASA ground control instructing someone changing a flat tire?
If the municipal service is being done in place of upgrading all of the radios in town trucks (garbage, parks, school-grounds, etc.) and emergency services vehicles, and incidentally giving them all access to email and other communications, the benefit to everyone else is just gravy. The goal with any such service is to make it cheap enough that it's not worth metering, and ubiquitous enough that it can be relied on. This is in direct contrast to the goal of any private company, which is to make the highest profit possible. The people who make hardware know that once the hardware is in place it runs for pennies worth of electricity with minimal attention, so they're concentrating on getting buy-in and build-out; it's the people who hope to make money renting out a service who are trying to block things.
Of course M$ would love to see someone run Windows on a Mac. I expect a triumphant press release about how "Even Mac buyers switch to Windows!" the minute a copy of Windows phones home to authenticate or update with the computer ID.
Hell, Windows (or any system) could have been better from the start. The entire PC world threw away all of the accumulated knowledge of the mainframe world, thinking it was too expensive and not looking forward to the degree of integration to come. IBM had VM/CMS for years; Multics was invented in the 50s, for crying out loud! They made virtual machines and dynamic loading and layered security work with stone knives and bearskins!
Odds are, Apple will demonstrate Windows on a Mac - as a subsystem, just "because we can", while running widgets in overlapping windows, and daring M$ to do the reverse.
Who ever says it's compatible with Windows? Making it ever-so-slightly incompatible would be easier because it's not just legacy-free, it's a fresh start. They'd want to use commodity parts without having to license Microsoft's hardware spec.
Watch the speech. Jobs didn't say he had OSX running on a PC, he said he had OSX running on an Intel-processor platform. Right now it's a Pentium-as-we-know-it, it may or may not be by the time they ship systems. And he didn't say that Windows would run on it natively, either.
Using commodity memory, bus,parts, etc. they get the price down comparable to a PC, removing one of the acceptance obstacles.
This could work. I hope so. I want my Intel stock back up where it was when they laid me off.
Intel bought the company I used to work for. Note the past tense. It applies to about five hundred other people too.