Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles"
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Stalling Cars Via OnStar
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Ahh so you're one of those intellectually useless "strict Constitutional constructionists" who never seem to FUCKING realize that the way the US Constitution was written and the way the real world works today do not mesh up 100%.
Thats fine and dandy, but at what point did government stop playing by the rules? If the constitution is irrelevant, then why don't we simply ignore it all together.
Is it just a sham to make people think that we have some sort of rule of law for our freedoms? I mean at least when the prohibitionists outlawed alcohol they did so in the proper fashion by an amendment to the constitution.
Simply stating that the government has the authority simply writes them a blank check at this point and AFAIK no one has pointed out a really good reason when this legally changed.
Its easy to kind of point out when people started to ignore the rules though. Jefferson was right in the respect that we should have re-written the constitution from scratch every 20 years or so.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles"
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Stalling Cars Via OnStar
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Tasers are overused is a different question altogether, but being tased is a much better alternative than being forcibly subdued by any number of other means. Tasers are designed to be a safer and non-lethal ("non-lethal" in weapons terms doesn't mean "never, ever lethal or having any contributing effect on a possible lethal scenario whatsoever" - and please, don't link me to your favorite article or sob story about how oh-so-dangerous Tasers are: given their use, they are far, far less dangerous than the means they replaced).
Personally, I would argue that because tasers are less than lethal they are used more often than required and often as the first resort.
Whereas when you only had a gun, you would use that as a last resort. The issue that I have is what are the situations in which a police officer wouldn't use a gun as opposed as a taser. One would think, that faced with a gun that the police officer would respond with a gun rather than a taser due to the nature of the situation.
So in effect, tasers did not replace guns but simply were an extension of subduing system such as existing technique such as mace and club.
Given the choice of being beat, maced, or tasered I think most people are hard pressed to know which one they would like to face. The issue of the taser I think most people have is that it is used in situations that is not required. Take the example of the boy who harrased John Kerry. Yes he may have deserved to be handful and forcefully ejected, but in no means was he a physical threat to anyone. The taser was simply used to make the securities job easier rather than concern of life or limb.
But I digress... I think the original issue was about unintentional consequences. I wouldn't be so concerned about the government using the onstar system to control the populace as I would be of disgruntled/stalker employees, denial of service attacks, and plain old bugs that cause system outages.
Imagine if you will that an error in the system caused all cars to slow down who used the service. Of course I'm sure OnStar has thought about it.
Here's how I see it, as a long time EBay user -- almost since day one. EBay has a huge problem: They're a public company, and it is not sufficient for them to simply make profits. They must actually grow those profits. This means that no matter how good a model they have -- and make no mistake, initially, they had an excellent model -- they have to continue to tweak it and push it in search of new and increased income.
Thats the problem with the public company system. In so much they can't see the forest for the trees and simply destroy a good business model in search of more profit.
The key problem is the the corporate culture pays people to find ways constantly improve rather than attempt to find a status quo in which long term gains are prized over short term.
The Bible (and God it's author) does not condemn killing in defence, punishment for a crime, or in wartime.
Oddly enough the old testament seems to be advocating genocide. Shortly after Moses got the 10 commandments, god told Joshua to kill off everyone (including women and children) in cities who would not submit to the chosen people's rule.
I'd also like to point out many early non-Catholic Christians actually viewed the old testament as evil and written by the hand of a demi-urge. However the Papacy would have none of that and had most of these people put to death over the course of several thousand years.
Most notably were the Cathars and various other gnostic sects. If the Papacy had only the new testament to work with then they would have little to justify their wars of religion and garner support from newly converted pagans who wished to continue their warring ways.
To be really fair, there is no mention of hell in the old testament and is actually only referred to as the physical location in the new testament in name (not the lake of fire in revelations which isn't referred to as directly as hell) which was pulled directly to Roman-pagan mythology hades as a form of underworld punishment rather then the concept of "separation of God".
And if really want to get to be a historical stickler there is no ancient Greek word for "homosexual" which Leviticus refers too but rather the word means "soft" which could mean weak willed by context.
At any rate, simply using the 10 commandments literally needs some context to the situation. You also have to remember there are plenty of other dietary and Jewish old testament laws that many people ignore which are just as important. I mean we still don't put people to death for working on the Sabbath (which according to Jewish law is Saturday by the way and not Sunday) nor do we sell our daughters into slavery.
If a 'neurotic' or 'emotional' player program starts beating the 'purely logical' computer engines in chess, then I'll take notice.
But thats just it. Chess allows only for the "Next Best Move". Playing an illogical move only results in the player playing it to loose because it puts them at a disadvantage and the logical computer simply knows the counter moves anyways for your worst move.
As in...
A logical AI assumes you'll play the next best possible move, but if you play the next possible worst move you are in a worse position and the AI simply knows the next best move and plays for that, but if you still keep playing the worst possible move you will only end up loosing faster.
In that regards, a logical chess program would be an AI or human who plays non-logically.
However, the reason why an RTS is important is because Chess is a limited game to a certain subset of rules that a computer can brute force all possible best moves.
However, in real world combat situations, there are no set definitions of strategies because you are simply allowed almost infinite possibilities of winning.
Lets say we take a human pilot or an AI pilot in actual Fighter combat in the skies (we'll see this scenario in the next 20 years) and pit them against each other in a real world situation. A logical AI would understand what the next best move is and the pilot will have an idea of what a logical AI would do.
However, the human pilot might do something crazy it knows it can throw off the AIs strategy like flowing into a nearby storm cloud or perhaps into a dangerous maneuver through a canyon or city landscape (under bridges and between buildings) which might throw the logical AI off.
After a while, a human pilot would have a general strategy with dealing with an AI that didn't adapt. He would know how an AI would react and be able to defeat it without too much effort.
Now a completely crazy AI would basically confuse the human and also other AIs who assuming the other AI was going to do in its next best move. Since in the real world (and in RTS) there are almost infinite combinations of what you can do in real combat, being unpredictable really helps win battles.
But like I said... Chess only has a limited set of moves. I would be an illogical AI would do far better at a game of Go than his logical counterpart.
In my opinion this is proof that viruses are something one can only avoid through overall system security and, most importantly, knowledge about computers--no antivirus will protect you if you cannot protect yourself.
True. Even though I run OS X most of the time, I won't open email attachments or download random software programs because I'm just used to having to have that behavior on a Windows PC back in the late 90s early 00s. Every now and then I get paranoid and look at all the open processes and look them up on Google. Old habits die hard.
Fighters have always been primarily about defense, bombers have been offense. Yes, fighters defend bomber groups, but most of the time they are designed to go out, meet the invaders, and take them down, i.e., the other guys' bombers or attack aircraft. Ummm... No.
Fighters are about air superiority regardless of offense or defense. This has been the case since WWI.
The Luftwaffe didn't send fighters over the UK to defend Germany from British Bombers, but rather attempting to keep the RAF out of the sky. Whether shooting them on the runways or when they attempted to attack the German bombers didn't matter.
Of course the Luftwaffe had its role switched to defense in 1944, but it was still attempted to gain air superiority against allied fighters and bombers.
The role of the fighter is to destroy other aircraft. It can be used in defense or offense, but its key role is not defense like SAM or Flak batteries.
What's so great about Ron Paul? I mean unless you're a pro-lifer? One minute the guy tells us he things it's a state's right to allow or disallow abortion, and the next he says things like
Yeah. Yeah. I voted for Bush because of my dislike of Lieberman's anti-violent video games stance and look what that got us? Voting on a single issue still gets you a bad candidate that you didn't expect.
I really don't like Ron Paul's stance on anti-abortion, but if a president could outlaw it I'm sure Bush would have done it while he had control of congress.
The reason I support Ron Paul is that I know he will simply veto everything. Congress isn't going to pass any of his laws and he isn't going to pass any of theirs. It will force government to shut down.
So no... Paul is anti-abortion as they come, but in reality when faced with a new form of fascism are only hope would be to have people that would do their best to keep the system from working.
But is it really liberty they are promoting? Or is it anarchy?
I dunno. Maybe because the last German leader who kept telling them to follow his will or suffer anarchy turned out to be a big douche. Some of them are old enough to remember what it was like to have no privacy (especially the East Germans).
No, your example would be like if Apple sued anyone for using Final Cut Pro to make a movie. The engine itself is not copyright able material in itself as long as you don't use any copyrighted art that came with the engine (textures, models, elsewise) as the product goes.
Now if you took Master Chef and made a movie with him, Microsoft can sue for copyright violation. I'm sure Red Vs Blue had been either given the OK or talked with Microsoft when they started selling DVDs of their skits.
All I want is the URL so I can play it with mplayer. I have no intention of putting Flash on my machine. Is that so danged difficult??
Do you promise to view all the ads on the site and to not direct link the MPG on your blog without crediting the source?
But seriously, the one nice thing about Youtube is that it gives me the ability upload video to a 3rd party site and not have some leecher hose my web server. Sure flash is crappy, but I think in the end... Most people with web servers were tried of people just using up all their bandwidth on direct linked files which is why Flickr, Photobucket, and Youtube are so popular.
$1,000 web hosting fees aren't funny after getting your funny video linked on Fark.
That said, coffins have no names or faces and are unidentifiable by anyone. There is no reason to restrict the pictures of them. Clearly identifiable bodies or coffins with names on them on the other hand...
Which censorship is that, exactly, anyway? You certainly seem able to say whatever you'd like here, without fear of political actions being taken against you.
There was a quote I always took to heart (it was Lowtax of all people of SA) that went along like this "The perfect crime is not in one that you are never caught, but where there is nothing the police can do even if they catch you."
If I were one to seize power, I would do my best to give the people an illusion of freedom but controlling them none the less. I suppose you could call it censorship through proxy. Rather than having government officials and agents control people, I would put it in the hands of empowered persons (say corporations) who we share power with.
For example... As of 2004, 40% of the US economy is based off government spending and corporate lobbying is at an all time high. I really don't think there is a grand conspiracy but rather a nice system of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" which gives up things like Haliburton, Blackwater, and the ATT NSA scandal.
So with the major corporations in collusion with the government, they can pretty much dictate who can say way. This can be something as petty as disconnecting your service for complaining or firing you from your job speaking out again your companies cooperation with the government on questionable activities or suing your service provider to remove your critical blog with DMCA and so on.
Since you can't take the corporations to court over violation of your first amendment rights, then the government is free to use pressure on the corporations to do their dirty work for them and vice versa.
What utopia are you living in? In what is essentially a capitalistic business world, you ask companies to forget the money, do what's good for mankind?
Well doing bad things to mankind can usually lead to lawsuits and doing good things tend to lead for good publicity so it might be in a companies best interest to do good things and not to do bad things.
Secondly, altruism is a natural trait in humans, so on occasion an individual in a company will do something out of the kindness of their heart. Remember, corporations are made of people and not some mythical spirit being with its own magical thoughts and feelings.
I sort of had my doubts when I saw they were releasing TF2, but I'm slowly warming to the current concept.
Back in 1997 when TF came out gameplay on the internet was very campy (literally) and very platform rocket jumping-esque. The original TF was a gem on Quakeworld because it provided more than just death match but rather a team cooperation game with different classes.
Eventually, I went on to other games like Tribes, Counter Strike, and DoD and when I saw that the game was going back to its roots I had doubts that gameplay would work anymore since for a while they seemed to be taking a whole new direction with a more realistic atmosphere like counterstrike.
But then I saw their art direction and rather than focusing on realism like counter strike, they made it look more cartoonish and platform jumpy which basically how things were back in 97 (Quake, Turok, and Tomb Raider were all out then).
Once a new firmware has been released, all products shipped from Apple usually will have the new firmware. You would to need a downgrader to unlock your phone.
Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use.
The problem is that we don't have any better example of working intelligence to go off of. Sure its kind of like building an airplane that flaps its wings like a bird instead of a fixed wing plane works better, but general intelligence is very tricky. Now evolution did give us birds, but we found many other examples of aerodynamics that didn't involve birds early on (leaves, lighter than air craft, kites).
However, the only examples for intelligence we have is ourselves and some animals. Since we can't model intelligence that easy, the only thing we know that works is ourselves.
I'm not going to burden them with the many questions the GPLv2 and GPLv3 raise.
GPL is designed to give Freedom to the 3rd person in the chain of development. BSD only gives freedom to the second person in the chain, but he can restrict the 3rd person's freedom if they so choose. The 1st person is of course the original developer and he can do whatever he pleases regardless of license.
Hence, with BSD your code is only free to the first two persons and even though the 2nd person can be generous and release his changes in BSD to the 3rd... The 3rd is still free to restrict the freedoms of the fourth and so on.
GPLv3 makes sure you can't take away freedom at any point in the chain of development of anyone else that comes after you.
If what you want to do is create art from the natural world, that's great -- the showcased entries are undeniably beautiful, and I especially wouldn't mind having a the bat flight poster on my wall -- but it's a mistake to think that this is necessarily the best way to convey scientific information.
It depends. Sometimes by reading a spread sheet you can get everything you need by raw numbers, but sometimes you just go "Oh... Duh! Now its obvious!" when you make a visualization of it. Its just the way the human mind works and it is different for some people.
That said, I really doubt you could show a screen shot of your numbers to a board of directors who would be more interested in a nice PowerPoint presentation/visualization that would make sense to those not in your field.
The down side is that I have actually talked with people who say "I have this visualization I want to achieve. How do I make my numbers match?" at which point I sigh and tell them they excel isn't magically preventing them fabricating data and even the data labels can be changed to whatever they want it to say. That is when I think visualization is mostly wrong. *coughs*
Whoa there Nelly! Lets pretend you are Grandma for a second or your trying to talk your grandma over the phone to fix a problem.
I'll leave the first one out since most of the other posters said the new HPs do not come with the recovery disc.
2.) Try this when you have SSID broadcast turned off like you should. Doesn't show up in available networks or in a pop up (which your Grandma might have X'd out of). You got to add it to the preferred networks and do something from there (And I can't remember off the top of my head how to get it in there without messing with it) Its easy to connect to a AP on OS X that doesn't broadcast SSID and thats all I remember.
3.) One word. Switch to classic mode. Oh wait... This is Vista. How do you get to run again. Sorry grandma, I only have OS X and WinXP to look at. If you click on the start menu, do you see anything that says control panel? Well... Let me see if google has any instructions.
4.) Had to add more memory and swap out a video card for poor grandma and the activation key says we'd installed it on too many computers? Time to call Microsoft... Actually... I have called Microsoft for my own computer because I changed hardware once and their automated system works, but its a pain.
5.) Yes, I know about AVG too, but I doubt Grandma would unless I told her and chances are she wants to install Norton or Mcafee or whatever the sales rep talked into buying.
Truth be told... The first time I sat down in front of a Vista machine I was all "WTF?!! Where is the damn run menu?! Where is network neighborhood!"
I don't know about Linux, but at least OS X keeps things logical and Apple never made me call them at 3 in the morning just to get permission to reinstall the OS.
Get off your ass and get a real job, its really not that hard.
Actually, it really depends on where you live. In a rural area, you might be lucky to get $20,000 for a high end job with a degree in some areas. From a personal experience I grew up in a place where the furniture and textile markets had collapsed due to foreign imports and there was massive unemployment due to factory closures. However, it was a big government town (3 major state facilities in the county... 1 being a prison) so I was lucky and got a job as a computer tech early on. However, I will admit I got paid more as a temp job as a grocery bagger in a major metropolitan area 5 years later.
Anyways... I did my best to get out of that hell hole and pretty much for the sheer fact I knew people living in a metro city in another state who I could sleep on their couch for 6 months unemployed and doing crappy jobs let me have the ability to search work in that area that helped me start a career in technology which eventually netted me a job that paid more than my dad got in our home town (considering he had a masters degree and I dropped out of college has to say something).
Of course this is anecdotal but so is your observation. It really depends on where you live on your job prospects and income.
That said... Living expenses make me wonder if I really make more here than I would be had I never moved. Of course, if I moved to NYC I'd even get paid more but I'd make less due to rent.
I think #2 would be the major reason here. It's not just to hide "bad code". Why would you put all kinds of money and resources into your work, just to have someone else take it and profit off it after just a few tweaks? It's like asking, "Why doesn't Coca-Cola release their secret recipe?" Is it because it's bad?
In a perfect world, your code would be copyrighted, but everyone have the ability to see your code at the copyright office database. However, everyone else would have the same requirement so it would be easy in theory to find out who stole your code in their product and drag them into court.
The whole issue around IBM vs SCO was something along the lines of:
SCO: You stole our code and we have proof! IBM: OK. Let me see your code that you thought we stole so we can compare in front of the judge! SCO: No! Its proprietary! IBM: But if we can't see the code you said we stole, then how can you prove that we stole it to the court? SCO: That's not the point!
If everyones code was out in the open then we wouldn't have this problem because we'd know what they stole. Hell... If your code was made public when copyrighted then I'd say software patents are fine and dandy because your idea of a certain way to code something is valid and deserves actually deserves patent protection.
However, I doubt this would ever come to pass in my life time.
... is exactly why you don't want to destroy the utility of the HF radio spectrum to sell it to broadband-over-power-line Internet providers.
From my understanding owning a non-approved two way communication device is illegal in Burma (much like North Korea). You might be able to smuggle one in, but you'll probably be shot fairly quick if they find it.
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Ahh so you're one of those intellectually useless "strict Constitutional constructionists" who never seem to FUCKING realize that the way the US Constitution was written and the way the real world works today do not mesh up 100%.
Thats fine and dandy, but at what point did government stop playing by the rules? If the constitution is irrelevant, then why don't we simply ignore it all together.
Is it just a sham to make people think that we have some sort of rule of law for our freedoms? I mean at least when the prohibitionists outlawed alcohol they did so in the proper fashion by an amendment to the constitution.
Simply stating that the government has the authority simply writes them a blank check at this point and AFAIK no one has pointed out a really good reason when this legally changed.
Its easy to kind of point out when people started to ignore the rules though. Jefferson was right in the respect that we should have re-written the constitution from scratch every 20 years or so.
Tasers are overused is a different question altogether, but being tased is a much better alternative than being forcibly subdued by any number of other means. Tasers are designed to be a safer and non-lethal ("non-lethal" in weapons terms doesn't mean "never, ever lethal or having any contributing effect on a possible lethal scenario whatsoever" - and please, don't link me to your favorite article or sob story about how oh-so-dangerous Tasers are: given their use, they are far, far less dangerous than the means they replaced).
Personally, I would argue that because tasers are less than lethal they are used more often than required and often as the first resort.
Whereas when you only had a gun, you would use that as a last resort. The issue that I have is what are the situations in which a police officer wouldn't use a gun as opposed as a taser. One would think, that faced with a gun that the police officer would respond with a gun rather than a taser due to the nature of the situation.
So in effect, tasers did not replace guns but simply were an extension of subduing system such as existing technique such as mace and club.
Given the choice of being beat, maced, or tasered I think most people are hard pressed to know which one they would like to face. The issue of the taser I think most people have is that it is used in situations that is not required. Take the example of the boy who harrased John Kerry. Yes he may have deserved to be handful and forcefully ejected, but in no means was he a physical threat to anyone. The taser was simply used to make the securities job easier rather than concern of life or limb.
But I digress... I think the original issue was about unintentional consequences. I wouldn't be so concerned about the government using the onstar system to control the populace as I would be of disgruntled/stalker employees, denial of service attacks, and plain old bugs that cause system outages.
Imagine if you will that an error in the system caused all cars to slow down who used the service. Of course I'm sure OnStar has thought about it.
Here's how I see it, as a long time EBay user -- almost since day one. EBay has a huge problem: They're a public company, and it is not sufficient for them to simply make profits. They must actually grow those profits. This means that no matter how good a model they have -- and make no mistake, initially, they had an excellent model -- they have to continue to tweak it and push it in search of new and increased income.
Thats the problem with the public company system. In so much they can't see the forest for the trees and simply destroy a good business model in search of more profit.
The key problem is the the corporate culture pays people to find ways constantly improve rather than attempt to find a status quo in which long term gains are prized over short term.
The Bible (and God it's author) does not condemn killing in defence, punishment for a crime, or in wartime.
Oddly enough the old testament seems to be advocating genocide. Shortly after Moses got the 10 commandments, god told Joshua to kill off everyone (including women and children) in cities who would not submit to the chosen people's rule.
I'd also like to point out many early non-Catholic Christians actually viewed the old testament as evil and written by the hand of a demi-urge. However the Papacy would have none of that and had most of these people put to death over the course of several thousand years.
Most notably were the Cathars and various other gnostic sects. If the Papacy had only the new testament to work with then they would have little to justify their wars of religion and garner support from newly converted pagans who wished to continue their warring ways.
To be really fair, there is no mention of hell in the old testament and is actually only referred to as the physical location in the new testament in name (not the lake of fire in revelations which isn't referred to as directly as hell) which was pulled directly to Roman-pagan mythology hades as a form of underworld punishment rather then the concept of "separation of God".
And if really want to get to be a historical stickler there is no ancient Greek word for "homosexual" which Leviticus refers too but rather the word means "soft" which could mean weak willed by context.
At any rate, simply using the 10 commandments literally needs some context to the situation. You also have to remember there are plenty of other dietary and Jewish old testament laws that many people ignore which are just as important. I mean we still don't put people to death for working on the Sabbath (which according to Jewish law is Saturday by the way and not Sunday) nor do we sell our daughters into slavery.
If a 'neurotic' or 'emotional' player program starts beating the 'purely logical' computer engines in chess, then I'll take notice.
But thats just it. Chess allows only for the "Next Best Move". Playing an illogical move only results in the player playing it to loose because it puts them at a disadvantage and the logical computer simply knows the counter moves anyways for your worst move.
As in...
A logical AI assumes you'll play the next best possible move, but if you play the next possible worst move you are in a worse position and the AI simply knows the next best move and plays for that, but if you still keep playing the worst possible move you will only end up loosing faster.
In that regards, a logical chess program would be an AI or human who plays non-logically.
However, the reason why an RTS is important is because Chess is a limited game to a certain subset of rules that a computer can brute force all possible best moves.
However, in real world combat situations, there are no set definitions of strategies because you are simply allowed almost infinite possibilities of winning.
Lets say we take a human pilot or an AI pilot in actual Fighter combat in the skies (we'll see this scenario in the next 20 years) and pit them against each other in a real world situation. A logical AI would understand what the next best move is and the pilot will have an idea of what a logical AI would do.
However, the human pilot might do something crazy it knows it can throw off the AIs strategy like flowing into a nearby storm cloud or perhaps into a dangerous maneuver through a canyon or city landscape (under bridges and between buildings) which might throw the logical AI off.
After a while, a human pilot would have a general strategy with dealing with an AI that didn't adapt. He would know how an AI would react and be able to defeat it without too much effort.
Now a completely crazy AI would basically confuse the human and also other AIs who assuming the other AI was going to do in its next best move. Since in the real world (and in RTS) there are almost infinite combinations of what you can do in real combat, being unpredictable really helps win battles.
But like I said... Chess only has a limited set of moves. I would be an illogical AI would do far better at a game of Go than his logical counterpart.
In my opinion this is proof that viruses are something one can only avoid through overall system security and, most importantly, knowledge about computers--no antivirus will protect you if you cannot protect yourself.
True. Even though I run OS X most of the time, I won't open email attachments or download random software programs because I'm just used to having to have that behavior on a Windows PC back in the late 90s early 00s. Every now and then I get paranoid and look at all the open processes and look them up on Google. Old habits die hard.
Fighters are about air superiority regardless of offense or defense. This has been the case since WWI.
The Luftwaffe didn't send fighters over the UK to defend Germany from British Bombers, but rather attempting to keep the RAF out of the sky. Whether shooting them on the runways or when they attempted to attack the German bombers didn't matter.
Of course the Luftwaffe had its role switched to defense in 1944, but it was still attempted to gain air superiority against allied fighters and bombers.
The role of the fighter is to destroy other aircraft. It can be used in defense or offense, but its key role is not defense like SAM or Flak batteries.
What's so great about Ron Paul? I mean unless you're a pro-lifer? One minute the guy tells us he things it's a state's right to allow or disallow abortion, and the next he says things like
Yeah. Yeah. I voted for Bush because of my dislike of Lieberman's anti-violent video games stance and look what that got us? Voting on a single issue still gets you a bad candidate that you didn't expect.
I really don't like Ron Paul's stance on anti-abortion, but if a president could outlaw it I'm sure Bush would have done it while he had control of congress.
The reason I support Ron Paul is that I know he will simply veto everything. Congress isn't going to pass any of his laws and he isn't going to pass any of theirs. It will force government to shut down.
So no... Paul is anti-abortion as they come, but in reality when faced with a new form of fascism are only hope would be to have people that would do their best to keep the system from working.
But is it really liberty they are promoting? Or is it anarchy?
I dunno. Maybe because the last German leader who kept telling them to follow his will or suffer anarchy turned out to be a big douche. Some of them are old enough to remember what it was like to have no privacy (especially the East Germans).
No, your example would be like if Apple sued anyone for using Final Cut Pro to make a movie. The engine itself is not copyright able material in itself as long as you don't use any copyrighted art that came with the engine (textures, models, elsewise) as the product goes.
Now if you took Master Chef and made a movie with him, Microsoft can sue for copyright violation. I'm sure Red Vs Blue had been either given the OK or talked with Microsoft when they started selling DVDs of their skits.
Was the first word "ninja?"
All I want is the URL so I can play it with mplayer. I have no intention of putting Flash on my machine. Is that so danged difficult??
Do you promise to view all the ads on the site and to not direct link the MPG on your blog without crediting the source?
But seriously, the one nice thing about Youtube is that it gives me the ability upload video to a 3rd party site and not have some leecher hose my web server. Sure flash is crappy, but I think in the end... Most people with web servers were tried of people just using up all their bandwidth on direct linked files which is why Flickr, Photobucket, and Youtube are so popular.
$1,000 web hosting fees aren't funny after getting your funny video linked on Fark.
Like Cindy Sheehan?
That said, coffins have no names or faces and are unidentifiable by anyone. There is no reason to restrict the pictures of them. Clearly identifiable bodies or coffins with names on them on the other hand...
Which censorship is that, exactly, anyway? You certainly seem able to say whatever you'd like here, without fear of political actions being taken against you.
There was a quote I always took to heart (it was Lowtax of all people of SA) that went along like this "The perfect crime is not in one that you are never caught, but where there is nothing the police can do even if they catch you."
If I were one to seize power, I would do my best to give the people an illusion of freedom but controlling them none the less. I suppose you could call it censorship through proxy. Rather than having government officials and agents control people, I would put it in the hands of empowered persons (say corporations) who we share power with.
For example... As of 2004, 40% of the US economy is based off government spending and corporate lobbying is at an all time high. I really don't think there is a grand conspiracy but rather a nice system of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" which gives up things like Haliburton, Blackwater, and the ATT NSA scandal.
So with the major corporations in collusion with the government, they can pretty much dictate who can say way. This can be something as petty as disconnecting your service for complaining or firing you from your job speaking out again your companies cooperation with the government on questionable activities or suing your service provider to remove your critical blog with DMCA and so on.
Since you can't take the corporations to court over violation of your first amendment rights, then the government is free to use pressure on the corporations to do their dirty work for them and vice versa.
What utopia are you living in? In what is essentially a capitalistic business world, you ask companies to forget the money, do what's good for mankind?
Well doing bad things to mankind can usually lead to lawsuits and doing good things tend to lead for good publicity so it might be in a companies best interest to do good things and not to do bad things.
Secondly, altruism is a natural trait in humans, so on occasion an individual in a company will do something out of the kindness of their heart. Remember, corporations are made of people and not some mythical spirit being with its own magical thoughts and feelings.
I sort of had my doubts when I saw they were releasing TF2, but I'm slowly warming to the current concept.
Back in 1997 when TF came out gameplay on the internet was very campy (literally) and very platform rocket jumping-esque. The original TF was a gem on Quakeworld because it provided more than just death match but rather a team cooperation game with different classes.
Eventually, I went on to other games like Tribes, Counter Strike, and DoD and when I saw that the game was going back to its roots I had doubts that gameplay would work anymore since for a while they seemed to be taking a whole new direction with a more realistic atmosphere like counterstrike.
But then I saw their art direction and rather than focusing on realism like counter strike, they made it look more cartoonish and platform jumpy which basically how things were back in 97 (Quake, Turok, and Tomb Raider were all out then).
Of course it could be just nostalgia.
Don't install the new firmware.
Once a new firmware has been released, all products shipped from Apple usually will have the new firmware. You would to need a downgrader to unlock your phone.
Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use.
The problem is that we don't have any better example of working intelligence to go off of. Sure its kind of like building an airplane that flaps its wings like a bird instead of a fixed wing plane works better, but general intelligence is very tricky. Now evolution did give us birds, but we found many other examples of aerodynamics that didn't involve birds early on (leaves, lighter than air craft, kites).
However, the only examples for intelligence we have is ourselves and some animals. Since we can't model intelligence that easy, the only thing we know that works is ourselves.
I'm not going to burden them with the many questions the GPLv2 and GPLv3 raise.
GPL is designed to give Freedom to the 3rd person in the chain of development. BSD only gives freedom to the second person in the chain, but he can restrict the 3rd person's freedom if they so choose. The 1st person is of course the original developer and he can do whatever he pleases regardless of license.
Hence, with BSD your code is only free to the first two persons and even though the 2nd person can be generous and release his changes in BSD to the 3rd... The 3rd is still free to restrict the freedoms of the fourth and so on.
GPLv3 makes sure you can't take away freedom at any point in the chain of development of anyone else that comes after you.
If what you want to do is create art from the natural world, that's great -- the showcased entries are undeniably beautiful, and I especially wouldn't mind having a the bat flight poster on my wall -- but it's a mistake to think that this is necessarily the best way to convey scientific information.
It depends. Sometimes by reading a spread sheet you can get everything you need by raw numbers, but sometimes you just go "Oh... Duh! Now its obvious!" when you make a visualization of it. Its just the way the human mind works and it is different for some people.
That said, I really doubt you could show a screen shot of your numbers to a board of directors who would be more interested in a nice PowerPoint presentation/visualization that would make sense to those not in your field.
The down side is that I have actually talked with people who say "I have this visualization I want to achieve. How do I make my numbers match?" at which point I sigh and tell them they excel isn't magically preventing them fabricating data and even the data labels can be changed to whatever they want it to say. That is when I think visualization is mostly wrong. *coughs*
Whoa there Nelly! Lets pretend you are Grandma for a second or your trying to talk your grandma over the phone to fix a problem.
I'll leave the first one out since most of the other posters said the new HPs do not come with the recovery disc.
2.) Try this when you have SSID broadcast turned off like you should. Doesn't show up in available networks or in a pop up (which your Grandma might have X'd out of). You got to add it to the preferred networks and do something from there (And I can't remember off the top of my head how to get it in there without messing with it) Its easy to connect to a AP on OS X that doesn't broadcast SSID and thats all I remember.
3.) One word. Switch to classic mode. Oh wait... This is Vista. How do you get to run again. Sorry grandma, I only have OS X and WinXP to look at. If you click on the start menu, do you see anything that says control panel? Well... Let me see if google has any instructions.
4.) Had to add more memory and swap out a video card for poor grandma and the activation key says we'd installed it on too many computers? Time to call Microsoft... Actually... I have called Microsoft for my own computer because I changed hardware once and their automated system works, but its a pain.
5.) Yes, I know about AVG too, but I doubt Grandma would unless I told her and chances are she wants to install Norton or Mcafee or whatever the sales rep talked into buying.
Truth be told... The first time I sat down in front of a Vista machine I was all "WTF?!! Where is the damn run menu?! Where is network neighborhood!"
I don't know about Linux, but at least OS X keeps things logical and Apple never made me call them at 3 in the morning just to get permission to reinstall the OS.
Get off your ass and get a real job, its really not that hard.
Actually, it really depends on where you live. In a rural area, you might be lucky to get $20,000 for a high end job with a degree in some areas. From a personal experience I grew up in a place where the furniture and textile markets had collapsed due to foreign imports and there was massive unemployment due to factory closures. However, it was a big government town (3 major state facilities in the county... 1 being a prison) so I was lucky and got a job as a computer tech early on. However, I will admit I got paid more as a temp job as a grocery bagger in a major metropolitan area 5 years later.
Anyways... I did my best to get out of that hell hole and pretty much for the sheer fact I knew people living in a metro city in another state who I could sleep on their couch for 6 months unemployed and doing crappy jobs let me have the ability to search work in that area that helped me start a career in technology which eventually netted me a job that paid more than my dad got in our home town (considering he had a masters degree and I dropped out of college has to say something).
Of course this is anecdotal but so is your observation. It really depends on where you live on your job prospects and income.
That said... Living expenses make me wonder if I really make more here than I would be had I never moved. Of course, if I moved to NYC I'd even get paid more but I'd make less due to rent.
I think #2 would be the major reason here. It's not just to hide "bad code". Why would you put all kinds of money and resources into your work, just to have someone else take it and profit off it after just a few tweaks? It's like asking, "Why doesn't Coca-Cola release their secret recipe?" Is it because it's bad?
In a perfect world, your code would be copyrighted, but everyone have the ability to see your code at the copyright office database. However, everyone else would have the same requirement so it would be easy in theory to find out who stole your code in their product and drag them into court.
The whole issue around IBM vs SCO was something along the lines of:
SCO: You stole our code and we have proof!
IBM: OK. Let me see your code that you thought we stole so we can compare in front of the judge!
SCO: No! Its proprietary!
IBM: But if we can't see the code you said we stole, then how can you prove that we stole it to the court?
SCO: That's not the point!
If everyones code was out in the open then we wouldn't have this problem because we'd know what they stole. Hell... If your code was made public when copyrighted then I'd say software patents are fine and dandy because your idea of a certain way to code something is valid and deserves actually deserves patent protection.
However, I doubt this would ever come to pass in my life time.
But see, going to war with Myanmar means going to war with China. No one wants that.
So does going to war with Iran, but no one realizes that.
I mean... If someone shot up your largest foreign oil supplier you'd get pretty angry too. It would be as if China started bombing Saudi Arabia.
... is exactly why you don't want to destroy the utility of the HF radio spectrum to sell it to broadband-over-power-line Internet providers.
From my understanding owning a non-approved two way communication device is illegal in Burma (much like North Korea). You might be able to smuggle one in, but you'll probably be shot fairly quick if they find it.