Actually, no. Do contented people become terrorists? I think not. What is the ratio of terrorists in poor countries compared to those in rich countries? Very high. Which country do these people see as warmongering and hating all arabs/Islam? I'll give you a clue: it's not Finland.
The real question isn't whether terrorists could build a nuclear bomb, but whether they would want to. As long as the US can threaten smaller countries with the "invade first and ask questions later" approach to foreign policy, the fear will breed opponents to the US. The stronger the fear is, the likelier it is to fool individuals into thinking they can solve things by killing US citizens. The most effective way to combat terrorism is to stop people from being afraid, not by rounding up terrorists that are already known. America is channeling all its energy into short-term solutions and forgetting the long-term ones.
Well, I *do* live in the E.U. and I also like open source, so it's actually quite relevant. I know that most slashdotters live in the good old U.S. of A., but Europeans are quite a large minority, I should think. I also know that it wouldn't affect many people *right now* if the bill were passed, but in a few years it might be altogether different if lots of trivial patents were accepted...
Thank goodness all you have to do in the U.K. to avoid paying tax on something is to buy it abroad and hide it under your hat while going through customs...
From the Techworld article: Polish MEP and former prime minister Jerzy Buzek called the group leaders' move to request a restart of the legal process a "very good decision". He called for a real debate to start about the patents directive but stressed that the EU should set a limit of one year for agreeing to legislation on patents because Europe needs the rules to help foster innovation.
So maybe we can actually see some closure on this issue in 2006:)
True, but it still worries me how many people in Europe are willing to pander to the interests of corporations with laws like these *cough*tonyblair*cough*... It's a good job there are lots of people in the EU lobbying for open source, and just the people in general.
Very good. Now that it has definitely been rejected, it will be much harder for a software patent bill to be passed through the European Parliament again without the wording being changed significantly. This probably won't happen any time soon...
I feel obliged to say at this point that I've met the man Douglas Adams based Marvin on (allegedly - he definitely went to university with him). He trained as a lawyer, I think, but then he became a music teacher. He's very intelligent, talks quite slowly, and when he says "very good" in response to some work it sounds like he meant "I hate all these attempts. They're rubbish. But yours was slightly less awful than the others so I suppose I ought to say something encouraging, not that I like doing that sort of thing. Oh God, I'm so depressed..."
But seriously, if it was that or death by cancer, which would you choose? I think a lot of people would go with this in medical trials even if the FDA didn't pass it.
I'd be a bit annoyed if the rm command couldn't delete my own files...
The word you're looking for is "backup". I've set my comp to backup using rsync - you can make daily backups to a different partition/disk/computer, make a new directory every day, but use hard links to only take up the disk space of incremental backups. And then make the parent folder only writable by root. Magical stuff...
I was thinking of the bigger deals they have with bigger companies when I wrote that. Having said that, the bang per buck ratio needs to be good on support by open source companies even on low price products, as (perhaps regrettably) there is little else that they *can* sell. I might buy a Red Hat t-shirt if they thought of a funny slogan though;)
This all seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Red Hat's business model for its Enterprise Linux is not selling the software as-is: this simply does not make (very much) financial sense, as the software is mostly given away for free by the creators. This is why Red Hat made the decision to split their product line in two and give away Fedora for free.
The business model for RHEL is selling support: if anything goes wrong with the product you can simply call in Red Hat and get them to fix it, without potentially wasting time or money on employing your own linux admin staff. So I don't see why Red Hat is so bothered about this when CentOS doesn't provide the support they do, and when they'd already removed most of the Red Hat references from their web site.
The question is, do they still reccomend users to log in as root for everday use? The thing that put me off Linspire the most was that they have the full power of the Unix security model but they don't bother using it.
Ah, but the information in the asbestos site comes from other places, and a large percentage of *these* places are likely not there solely to make a profit. My point is that an extra level of detachment doesn't detract from the information itself...
Whether you spend your time at this site, or the sites that it gets its information from, is largely to do with how useful the site is, not whether gathering this information is ethical (the majority of people wouldn't even think of the ethics involved). If not including any original information makes you go to the other sites, then that means the business model of the asbestos site is flawed; it doesn't mean that its ethics are flawed.
If you think about it, it is this sort of thing that copyright law was set up to avoid. But if the publishers of the original information didn't deny the right to freely distribute the information, or if they even allowed and encouraged it expressly, then there is no reason to think this is unethical.
This begs the question of why so many people seem opposed to this asbestos site. I've already argued against the fact that it's because its using other peoples' original information. It's not the fact that the website is making a profit - many websites make profits providing useful services, like Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. It's not the fact that advertisers are making money from click-throughs - you have to spend money to advertise, and recoup it not to make a loss, and you need to advertise to sell products. So in the end it boils down to the product that is being sold. As someone pointed out in a previous post, the people that really profit from this particular site (and the industry it relies on) are lawyers and the people who lose out are the general public (through rising prices). Thus the real reason why the site creator is Evil (tm) is for jumping on this bandwagon and making a profit out of that. Now that's a reason I can agree with:)
(Reading back the above, maybe I do think about money too much - my life doesn't revolve around it though, and that's why I like open source so much;)
As we all know, and have been hearing for some time from people like the EFF, ID card schemes can easily be fooled by using fake ID when getting the ID issued. Even though the cards may be secure, it is the method of distibution which will decide their usefulness. I'm sure scammers will find a few ways to get their hands on real ID cards with fake details, so let's just hope that it will be harder than it is at present.
This isn't that much different from a search engine - it's just more specialised and more news-focussed. Think of it like this - the service provides information that it didn't create and gets revenue from advertisers who like the amount of people it can get to view their adverts on the site. Google have created a very successful business model this way. Why should this suddenly become unethical just because it's in blog format?
Just because you personally likely won't use a feature doesn't mean it isn't useful for someone out there (what's the population of China and Japan combined?)
Both the Japanese and the Chinese have been able to understand English letters and numbers as a common part of their languages for a long time now, as well as being able to pronounce them roughly correctly (given the respective sets of phonemes of the languages). I don't know the details offhand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a language that didn't understand English characters now. I think that as this is the case, dropping international support in domain names is actually a very good idea for the security it brings.
The meat of the book is here, in discussions about why gamers cast aside the ethical quandaries brought up by games like Grand Theft Auto (they're playing the game mechanics, not the fiction surrounding the mechanics) ...
With parent groups growing ever more shrill at the release of morally ambiguous titles, Raph Koster's book is a refreshing read.
Good. The more that respected people emphasise this, the better. There has been a frenzy going on in the last few years in the American media (and other countries, to an extent) about violence incited by games, films, and gangsta rap. If we make an effort to find out what really happens when we play games, we have a much better argument to show them they are wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no. Do contented people become terrorists? I think not. What is the ratio of terrorists in poor countries compared to those in rich countries? Very high. Which country do these people see as warmongering and hating all arabs/Islam? I'll give you a clue: it's not Finland.
The real question isn't whether terrorists could build a nuclear bomb, but whether they would want to. As long as the US can threaten smaller countries with the "invade first and ask questions later" approach to foreign policy, the fear will breed opponents to the US. The stronger the fear is, the likelier it is to fool individuals into thinking they can solve things by killing US citizens. The most effective way to combat terrorism is to stop people from being afraid, not by rounding up terrorists that are already known. America is channeling all its energy into short-term solutions and forgetting the long-term ones.
Well, I *do* live in the E.U. and I also like open source, so it's actually quite relevant. I know that most slashdotters live in the good old U.S. of A., but Europeans are quite a large minority, I should think. I also know that it wouldn't affect many people *right now* if the bill were passed, but in a few years it might be altogether different if lots of trivial patents were accepted...
Thank goodness all you have to do in the U.K. to avoid paying tax on something is to buy it abroad and hide it under your hat while going through customs...
From the Techworld article:
:)
Polish MEP and former prime minister Jerzy Buzek called the group leaders' move to request a restart of the legal process a "very good decision". He called for a real debate to start about the patents directive but stressed that the EU should set a limit of one year for agreeing to legislation on patents because Europe needs the rules to help foster innovation.
So maybe we can actually see some closure on this issue in 2006
Maybe, but the really good news here is that they won't be able to pass a bill with the same wording through parliament for quite a few years now.
True, but it still worries me how many people in Europe are willing to pander to the interests of corporations with laws like these *cough*tonyblair*cough*... It's a good job there are lots of people in the EU lobbying for open source, and just the people in general.
Because it would mean the member states would all have no choice but to introduce software patents. Better only some countries than a whole continent.
Very good. Now that it has definitely been rejected, it will be much harder for a software patent bill to be passed through the European Parliament again without the wording being changed significantly. This probably won't happen any time soon...
It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical.
:)
I'd have to agree - that sentence scores very highly on the iron-o-meter
I feel obliged to say at this point that I've met the man Douglas Adams based Marvin on (allegedly - he definitely went to university with him). He trained as a lawyer, I think, but then he became a music teacher. He's very intelligent, talks quite slowly, and when he says "very good" in response to some work it sounds like he meant "I hate all these attempts. They're rubbish. But yours was slightly less awful than the others so I suppose I ought to say something encouraging, not that I like doing that sort of thing. Oh God, I'm so depressed..."
:)
So I believe it's true, anyway
Adams was British, so that would mean the 4th of February to him. Already missed it!
But seriously, if it was that or death by cancer, which would you choose? I think a lot of people would go with this in medical trials even if the FDA didn't pass it.
I'd be a bit annoyed if the rm command couldn't delete my own files...
The word you're looking for is "backup". I've set my comp to backup using rsync - you can make daily backups to a different partition/disk/computer, make a new directory every day, but use hard links to only take up the disk space of incremental backups. And then make the parent folder only writable by root. Magical stuff...
I guess you're right :D
;)
I was thinking of the bigger deals they have with bigger companies when I wrote that. Having said that, the bang per buck ratio needs to be good on support by open source companies even on low price products, as (perhaps regrettably) there is little else that they *can* sell. I might buy a Red Hat t-shirt if they thought of a funny slogan though
Except that Red Hat don't have to give them support if they're not actually running RHEL...
This all seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Red Hat's business model for its Enterprise Linux is not selling the software as-is: this simply does not make (very much) financial sense, as the software is mostly given away for free by the creators. This is why Red Hat made the decision to split their product line in two and give away Fedora for free.
The business model for RHEL is selling support: if anything goes wrong with the product you can simply call in Red Hat and get them to fix it, without potentially wasting time or money on employing your own linux admin staff. So I don't see why Red Hat is so bothered about this when CentOS doesn't provide the support they do, and when they'd already removed most of the Red Hat references from their web site.
That's good - I didn't know it explained why. But being root is still default, is it not?
(Oops - I wish Slashdot came with a spell-checker ;)
The question is, do they still reccomend users to log in as root for everday use? The thing that put me off Linspire the most was that they have the full power of the Unix security model but they don't bother using it.
Ah, but the information in the asbestos site comes from other places, and a large percentage of *these* places are likely not there solely to make a profit. My point is that an extra level of detachment doesn't detract from the information itself...
:)
;)
Whether you spend your time at this site, or the sites that it gets its information from, is largely to do with how useful the site is, not whether gathering this information is ethical (the majority of people wouldn't even think of the ethics involved). If not including any original information makes you go to the other sites, then that means the business model of the asbestos site is flawed; it doesn't mean that its ethics are flawed.
If you think about it, it is this sort of thing that copyright law was set up to avoid. But if the publishers of the original information didn't deny the right to freely distribute the information, or if they even allowed and encouraged it expressly, then there is no reason to think this is unethical.
This begs the question of why so many people seem opposed to this asbestos site. I've already argued against the fact that it's because its using other peoples' original information. It's not the fact that the website is making a profit - many websites make profits providing useful services, like Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. It's not the fact that advertisers are making money from click-throughs - you have to spend money to advertise, and recoup it not to make a loss, and you need to advertise to sell products. So in the end it boils down to the product that is being sold. As someone pointed out in a previous post, the people that really profit from this particular site (and the industry it relies on) are lawyers and the people who lose out are the general public (through rising prices). Thus the real reason why the site creator is Evil (tm) is for jumping on this bandwagon and making a profit out of that. Now that's a reason I can agree with
(Reading back the above, maybe I do think about money too much - my life doesn't revolve around it though, and that's why I like open source so much
As we all know, and have been hearing for some time from people like the EFF, ID card schemes can easily be fooled by using fake ID when getting the ID issued. Even though the cards may be secure, it is the method of distibution which will decide their usefulness. I'm sure scammers will find a few ways to get their hands on real ID cards with fake details, so let's just hope that it will be harder than it is at present.
This isn't that much different from a search engine - it's just more specialised and more news-focussed. Think of it like this - the service provides information that it didn't create and gets revenue from advertisers who like the amount of people it can get to view their adverts on the site. Google have created a very successful business model this way. Why should this suddenly become unethical just because it's in blog format?
Just because you personally likely won't use a feature doesn't mean it isn't useful for someone out there (what's the population of China and Japan combined?)
Both the Japanese and the Chinese have been able to understand English letters and numbers as a common part of their languages for a long time now, as well as being able to pronounce them roughly correctly (given the respective sets of phonemes of the languages). I don't know the details offhand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a language that didn't understand English characters now. I think that as this is the case, dropping international support in domain names is actually a very good idea for the security it brings.
The meat of the book is here, in discussions about why gamers cast aside the ethical quandaries brought up by games like Grand Theft Auto (they're playing the game mechanics, not the fiction surrounding the mechanics)
...
With parent groups growing ever more shrill at the release of morally ambiguous titles, Raph Koster's book is a refreshing read.
Good. The more that respected people emphasise this, the better. There has been a frenzy going on in the last few years in the American media (and other countries, to an extent) about violence incited by games, films, and gangsta rap. If we make an effort to find out what really happens when we play games, we have a much better argument to show them they are wrong.