There have been several pre-emptive captures of would-be terrorists both here in the US and abroad...and strangely enough, none of them were named "Alice" or "Bob". Coincidence?
Just get over it and move on. The government's supercomputers are going to snoop more and more of our formally "private" information. So will corporations, your neighbors, and your enemies.
Personally, I really don't give a rat's butt if some government computer flags my phone conversation with my friend Mohammed in Pakistan, especially if the computer picks up our side conversations about money transfer and nuclear bombs. If I were to make such a phone call, should I be surprised if someone in the CIA ends up listening to a recording? Should I be offended?
Also, just like those three words, they are independant. By this, I mean that a word like "way" has more than one meaning. For example, note the difference between "Way over there" and "I saw him on the way to work". One means something like "far", while the other means "path". Yet these meanings are not independant. They are drawing from the same concept and are clearly related.
"seikou" has TEN independant meanings. I doubt any word in English does this.
At least according to the textbook - in reality, Japanese DO emphasize syllables, and it is not consistent from place to place...for example "kumo" means both spider and cloud, and is pronounced differently depending on which you mean. Worse yet, which pronounciation is which flip-flops from Tokyo-style to Kansai-style. Same with "hashi", which means bridge or chop-sticks.
However, all of those words are written with different kanji. It just happens that "ka" "kan" "sou" and "kei" are the Chinese readings of a disproportionate share of kanji, and hence appear in a lot of words. Of those 21 words, I don't think more than seven or eight are spoken words. The rest are written combinations only, and many native Japanese wouldn't even "pronounce" them in their heads when reading - they go directly to the meaning, from what I understand.
Clearly, I am talking about words that have entirely unrelated meanings and different writings, but sound the same when spoken. Just for fun, I tried to guess one on the first try. Just pick any two common kanji readings and stitch them together. My guess was "seikou", which indeed did have ten different, unrelated meanings in my dictionary. My second guess, "kansei" had eleven.
English words rarely have more than three or four.
By what standard? I have studied Japanese for years, and they have far more than we do. This results from the fact that they have far fewer sounds to build from. I have encountered plenty of Japanese words with more than ten independant meanings.
You are breaking a legal agreement that you have concented to (or willfully ignored). That is fraud.
You have no "rights" in this matter whatsoever. Your supplier can push any agreement on you that they want. The only right you have that is relevant is the right to walk away.
since the beginning of law. When you buy media, you are making an agreement to abide by certain terms. If you do not follow your promises, you are breaking very basic laws that exist virtually everywhere.
If you do not like the license agreement, by all means shop elsewhere. There is far more media in the world than you could possibly consume in a thousand lifetimes (and growing). You don't need THAT song or movie.
how can we have a system that lets you copy your DVD onto YOUR computer, but doesn't let you copy it on to everyone else's?
It is irrelevant what it is LEGAL to do...when you buy media, you are agreeing to the seller's terms, which may be much more restrictive than the law...and often are. If you do not like their terms, don't buy or suck it up. To break them is illegal.
basic rights such as freedom of association, property rights, and a civil society. However, even limiting oneself to the very small subset of countries with truly democratic societies, the rich ones are the ones with less restrictive economic laws.
The more data that flows through their "pipes", the more they can "bill" OTHER ISP's that connect through them
This clearly cuts both ways - those ISPs also bill mine! And guess who pays? Me. This is just a big zero-sum game. When there is more traffic, customers pay more. Period. The current buffet-style concept is on the way out.
You are under the misconception that some data is more important then other data.
This is a misconception? OK, let's do a trade. I will send you any picture in my personal collection (at least one whole megabyte). In return, I will ask for just a few kilobytes of data. You are getting a steal - a ratio of hundreds to one. The data I would like includes your SS number and driver's license number, your home phone and address, your work phone and address, date of birth, location of birth, all your credit card and bank account numbers, and your mother's maiden name. Thanks.
So your particular "types" of data you feel should get priority
Whomever is willing to back their talk with cash should get priority.
I am willing to pay. People pirating things left and right have pretty much demonstrated that they are not. This crap is a huge fraction of all of the data on the system now.
Now, if you want to subscribe to a premium porn-site that gives you ultra-quick downloads of horse-spanking pictures, you can be right up at the front of the line with me. I don't mind.
Fair enough. It doesn't change the fact that the vast amounts of porn and P2P that are trying to pass through these junctions are pushing them towards their limits, with no signs of slowing in volume.
In the meantime, all the legit stuff is in threat of getting caught up in a porn jam.
You know what? My legitimate downloads or VoIP should get priority over your illegal download of the latest movies or fake pictures of Britney's tits - and I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Under "net neutrality", my VoIP provider can't pay (on my behalf) to get my important and time-sensitive data to the front of the line. I WANT THIS, and unlike most slashdotters, who just want more free porn/programs/movies/music faster, I am willing to pay for it.
The cost has more than doubled in the last year and a half. Many of the big players (Hemlock Semiconductor in Michigan is the world's biggest) are planning huge expansions, but it will take a few years. Right now they are all making a killing, and most of them are completely sold out for the next year. This is due to both increased demand (and waste) from the IC industry as it switches to 300mm, and because of a massive increase for solar applications.
It must be full of morons. Any significant company has a number of accountants and engineers who crunch countless numbers and options. A company that tried to maximize "profit today" at the expense of "profit tomorrow" would soon be out of business. Any capital expenditure is analyzed for ITS ENTIRE LIFETIME.
Please let me know what company you work at, so I can keep sure that I have no money invested in it. Honestly, it is more likely you simply have no idea how things work in the corporate world.
Fear of falling in a pit, getting hit by a fireball, stomped, fried, or otherwise getting killed.
One thing that has turned me off to modern games (as opposed to the old-school ones) is that "dying" has no meaning. With virtually continual savepoints and infinite lives, "dying" usually means nothing more than a 30-second setback nowadays. Therefore, I don't feel any excitement, because it really doesn't matter - completely the opposite to the experience of having one life left as you enter level 8-4.
Btw, please turn off your cpu and throw it in the trash. My company probably developed and produced several of the materials that were used in its manufacture, and since you clearly do not appreciate our work, we will gladly allow you to demonstrate the courage behind your convictions. You see, my company is EVIL. We have been sued into bankruptcy in the past, and our parent company bought out a company whose subsidiary caused a major disaster where many people died.
While you are at it, you had better trash your car, most of your personal hygiene products, and virtually anything you own that contains electronics. Our products are probably in most of them, or were used during critical manufacturing steps. Better trash your solar panels, too - we are heavily involved in those. If you really wanted to get serious, you would start robbing all of those fat-cat company employees, too. How dare they have good salaries, benefits, and pensions? The company is EVIL. It isn't FAIR.
If you want to do research that actually will have an impact on people's lives, get the heck out of universities as fast as possible. Given the vast amount of money that the government pours into research, it is obvious that SOME useful things will come of it. However, this amount is incredibly small given the money put in.
Having not so long ago switched from the academic lab to the corporate lab, let me just say I am thrilled with the relative effectiveness and sensibility of R&D at the corporate level, where you do what your customers need, drop projects that are going anywhere, don't thrive on grad-student and post-doc slave labor, but rather just invest in capital, etc. My company spent more on capital items I needed to do my work in the first month than my graduate advisor did in five years. Needless to say, my research goes a lot faster when I don't spend half my time fixing crap equipment, and when it DOES have problems, one of the technicians will probably take care of it.
Private R&D is about 60% of the total, but probably results in 80% of the technologies that you actually use.
Either the cat is all the way out of the bag, or it is close to being so already. I just operate under the assumption that someone with the desire to can find such information about me and use it to his or her advantage.
People need to quit worrying about stuffing genies back into bottles and learn to adapt. Government, businesses, and credit agencies need to learn to adapt, as well.
Yes, you lazy schumcks, this means you actually have to read your bills and check your credit report occasionally.
That beats being a PhD. A typical corporate entry-level PhD will make about $80k per year in salary and have benefits that amount to half of that. $120,000 divided by 50 hour weeks and 47 weeks per year comes out to $50/actual_hour_worked, ignoring business travel and evening conference calls.
There are guys in our plant making over $100k in pay alone a year with their overtime.
They are good people. It is sad to see their company falling apart, but on the other hand, any company that pays its lawn-mowers more than its PhDs is going to come un-glued.
Delphi and GM are really betting on fuel cells as the future. It is a tough problem, though, as fuel cells work much better in producing slow, steady power as compared to the high-output bursts that are required by automobiles. I have done some research on fuel cell membranes in the past (which is the primary show-stopper right now). It is a tough problem. FCs are not being held back by any form of corporate greed. They are being held back because they simply cannot be produced with the reliability, performance and price required.
When it comes to goods such as hygiene products, what distinguishes the name-brands from the knock-offs is so technical that only an incredibly small fraction of people could understand. The "Buy Pantene Pro-V because our surfactants have been highly engineered to facilitate the wetting of..." wouldn't be very engaging. Big hygiene companies like Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Johnson actually employ a large number (many hundreds) of scientists and engineers who are engaged in product improvement. The knock-offs then try to emulate the look and feel of name-brands, without the proprietary ingredients.
why isn't everyone and his brother rushing to open up a new clothing store rather than wasting their capital on anything else?
Yep, it is all those secret cabals that can magically stop other companies from entering the clothing market when prices rise.
Yes, a lot of western farmers would be out of business if the government didn't shield them. But that doesn't change the fact that prices are pushed down towards the margin. It just means that they aren't pushed down to FOREIGN margins.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been several pre-emptive captures of would-be terrorists both here in the US and abroad...and strangely enough, none of them were named "Alice" or "Bob". Coincidence?
Just get over it and move on. The government's supercomputers are going to snoop more and more of our formally "private" information. So will corporations, your neighbors, and your enemies.
Personally, I really don't give a rat's butt if some government computer flags my phone conversation with my friend Mohammed in Pakistan, especially if the computer picks up our side conversations about money transfer and nuclear bombs. If I were to make such a phone call, should I be surprised if someone in the CIA ends up listening to a recording? Should I be offended?
Also, just like those three words, they are independant. By this, I mean that a word like "way" has more than one meaning. For example, note the difference between "Way over there" and "I saw him on the way to work". One means something like "far", while the other means "path". Yet these meanings are not independant. They are drawing from the same concept and are clearly related.
"seikou" has TEN independant meanings. I doubt any word in English does this.
At least according to the textbook - in reality, Japanese DO emphasize syllables, and it is not consistent from place to place...for example "kumo" means both spider and cloud, and is pronounced differently depending on which you mean. Worse yet, which pronounciation is which flip-flops from Tokyo-style to Kansai-style. Same with "hashi", which means bridge or chop-sticks.
However, all of those words are written with different kanji. It just happens that "ka" "kan" "sou" and "kei" are the Chinese readings of a disproportionate share of kanji, and hence appear in a lot of words. Of those 21 words, I don't think more than seven or eight are spoken words. The rest are written combinations only, and many native Japanese wouldn't even "pronounce" them in their heads when reading - they go directly to the meaning, from what I understand.
Clearly, I am talking about words that have entirely unrelated meanings and different writings, but sound the same when spoken. Just for fun, I tried to guess one on the first try. Just pick any two common kanji readings and stitch them together. My guess was "seikou", which indeed did have ten different, unrelated meanings in my dictionary. My second guess, "kansei" had eleven.
English words rarely have more than three or four.
By what standard? I have studied Japanese for years, and they have far more than we do. This results from the fact that they have far fewer sounds to build from. I have encountered plenty of Japanese words with more than ten independant meanings.
You are breaking a legal agreement that you have concented to (or willfully ignored). That is fraud.
You have no "rights" in this matter whatsoever. Your supplier can push any agreement on you that they want. The only right you have that is relevant is the right to walk away.
since the beginning of law. When you buy media, you are making an agreement to abide by certain terms. If you do not follow your promises, you are breaking very basic laws that exist virtually everywhere.
If you do not like the license agreement, by all means shop elsewhere. There is far more media in the world than you could possibly consume in a thousand lifetimes (and growing). You don't need THAT song or movie.
I am sure if you were interested, you could get the terms beforehand. Generally, the terms are pretty consistent anyway.
how can we have a system that lets you copy your DVD onto YOUR computer, but doesn't let you copy it on to everyone else's?
It is irrelevant what it is LEGAL to do...when you buy media, you are agreeing to the seller's terms, which may be much more restrictive than the law...and often are. If you do not like their terms, don't buy or suck it up. To break them is illegal.
basic rights such as freedom of association, property rights, and a civil society. However, even limiting oneself to the very small subset of countries with truly democratic societies, the rich ones are the ones with less restrictive economic laws.
The more data that flows through their "pipes", the more they can "bill" OTHER ISP's that connect through them
This clearly cuts both ways - those ISPs also bill mine! And guess who pays? Me. This is just a big zero-sum game. When there is more traffic, customers pay more. Period. The current buffet-style concept is on the way out.
You are under the misconception that some data is more important then other data.
This is a misconception? OK, let's do a trade. I will send you any picture in my personal collection (at least one whole megabyte). In return, I will ask for just a few kilobytes of data. You are getting a steal - a ratio of hundreds to one. The data I would like includes your SS number and driver's license number, your home phone and address, your work phone and address, date of birth, location of birth, all your credit card and bank account numbers, and your mother's maiden name. Thanks.
So your particular "types" of data you feel should get priority
Whomever is willing to back their talk with cash should get priority.
I am willing to pay. People pirating things left and right have pretty much demonstrated that they are not. This crap is a huge fraction of all of the data on the system now.
Now, if you want to subscribe to a premium porn-site that gives you ultra-quick downloads of horse-spanking pictures, you can be right up at the front of the line with me. I don't mind.
Oh wait, the countries that have large degrees of economic freedom are the RICH ones, moron.
Wow, get a clue about History 101. Then move to North Korea and live up to your ideology.
Fair enough. It doesn't change the fact that the vast amounts of porn and P2P that are trying to pass through these junctions are pushing them towards their limits, with no signs of slowing in volume.
In the meantime, all the legit stuff is in threat of getting caught up in a porn jam.
You know what? My legitimate downloads or VoIP should get priority over your illegal download of the latest movies or fake pictures of Britney's tits - and I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Under "net neutrality", my VoIP provider can't pay (on my behalf) to get my important and time-sensitive data to the front of the line. I WANT THIS, and unlike most slashdotters, who just want more free porn/programs/movies/music faster, I am willing to pay for it.
The cost has more than doubled in the last year and a half. Many of the big players (Hemlock Semiconductor in Michigan is the world's biggest) are planning huge expansions, but it will take a few years. Right now they are all making a killing, and most of them are completely sold out for the next year. This is due to both increased demand (and waste) from the IC industry as it switches to 300mm, and because of a massive increase for solar applications.
It must be full of morons. Any significant company has a number of accountants and engineers who crunch countless numbers and options. A company that tried to maximize "profit today" at the expense of "profit tomorrow" would soon be out of business. Any capital expenditure is analyzed for ITS ENTIRE LIFETIME.
Please let me know what company you work at, so I can keep sure that I have no money invested in it. Honestly, it is more likely you simply have no idea how things work in the corporate world.
Fear of falling in a pit, getting hit by a fireball, stomped, fried, or otherwise getting killed.
One thing that has turned me off to modern games (as opposed to the old-school ones) is that "dying" has no meaning. With virtually continual savepoints and infinite lives, "dying" usually means nothing more than a 30-second setback nowadays. Therefore, I don't feel any excitement, because it really doesn't matter - completely the opposite to the experience of having one life left as you enter level 8-4.
Btw, please turn off your cpu and throw it in the trash. My company probably developed and produced several of the materials that were used in its manufacture, and since you clearly do not appreciate our work, we will gladly allow you to demonstrate the courage behind your convictions. You see, my company is EVIL. We have been sued into bankruptcy in the past, and our parent company bought out a company whose subsidiary caused a major disaster where many people died.
While you are at it, you had better trash your car, most of your personal hygiene products, and virtually anything you own that contains electronics. Our products are probably in most of them, or were used during critical manufacturing steps. Better trash your solar panels, too - we are heavily involved in those. If you really wanted to get serious, you would start robbing all of those fat-cat company employees, too. How dare they have good salaries, benefits, and pensions? The company is EVIL. It isn't FAIR.
If you want to do research that actually will have an impact on people's lives, get the heck out of universities as fast as possible. Given the vast amount of money that the government pours into research, it is obvious that SOME useful things will come of it. However, this amount is incredibly small given the money put in.
Having not so long ago switched from the academic lab to the corporate lab, let me just say I am thrilled with the relative effectiveness and sensibility of R&D at the corporate level, where you do what your customers need, drop projects that are going anywhere, don't thrive on grad-student and post-doc slave labor, but rather just invest in capital, etc. My company spent more on capital items I needed to do my work in the first month than my graduate advisor did in five years. Needless to say, my research goes a lot faster when I don't spend half my time fixing crap equipment, and when it DOES have problems, one of the technicians will probably take care of it.
Private R&D is about 60% of the total, but probably results in 80% of the technologies that you actually use.
Either the cat is all the way out of the bag, or it is close to being so already. I just operate under the assumption that someone with the desire to can find such information about me and use it to his or her advantage.
People need to quit worrying about stuffing genies back into bottles and learn to adapt. Government, businesses, and credit agencies need to learn to adapt, as well.
Yes, you lazy schumcks, this means you actually have to read your bills and check your credit report occasionally.
That beats being a PhD. A typical corporate entry-level PhD will make about $80k per year in salary and have benefits that amount to half of that. $120,000 divided by 50 hour weeks and 47 weeks per year comes out to $50/actual_hour_worked, ignoring business travel and evening conference calls.
There are guys in our plant making over $100k in pay alone a year with their overtime.
They are good people. It is sad to see their company falling apart, but on the other hand, any company that pays its lawn-mowers more than its PhDs is going to come un-glued.
Delphi and GM are really betting on fuel cells as the future. It is a tough problem, though, as fuel cells work much better in producing slow, steady power as compared to the high-output bursts that are required by automobiles. I have done some research on fuel cell membranes in the past (which is the primary show-stopper right now). It is a tough problem. FCs are not being held back by any form of corporate greed. They are being held back because they simply cannot be produced with the reliability, performance and price required.
When it comes to goods such as hygiene products, what distinguishes the name-brands from the knock-offs is so technical that only an incredibly small fraction of people could understand. The "Buy Pantene Pro-V because our surfactants have been highly engineered to facilitate the wetting of..." wouldn't be very engaging. Big hygiene companies like Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Johnson actually employ a large number (many hundreds) of scientists and engineers who are engaged in product improvement. The knock-offs then try to emulate the look and feel of name-brands, without the proprietary ingredients.
why isn't everyone and his brother rushing to open up a new clothing store rather than wasting their capital on anything else?
Yep, it is all those secret cabals that can magically stop other companies from entering the clothing market when prices rise.
Yes, a lot of western farmers would be out of business if the government didn't shield them. But that doesn't change the fact that prices are pushed down towards the margin. It just means that they aren't pushed down to FOREIGN margins.