Just a progression of binary integers. Okay. Now, consider these as binary expansions of a real number less than one:
0.10000000000000...
So we have a mapping from the above to all reals less than one. We can also consider this a mapping onto the power set of the integers:
010010010000000... {1, 4, 7}
So we have the same progression mapping onto both sets of interest. But, aleph0 of the reals (terminating fractions) will be encoded twice. It seems like we could in some way "subtract these out", since subtracting a lower order of infinity from a higher order should still give the higher order. Also, the diagonalization argument that Cantor used doesn't work, because the number generated is:
0.1111111111111111111111... = 1
But we said that we are limiting it to numbers less than one.
But, each of the bit sequences we are using to encode a subset or a real also encodes an integer. So the above shows that:
|reals| = |power set of integers| = |integers|
Which we know is false because everyone says so. So, where is the flaw?
(Everybody really knows that most money is made on tour!)
Everybody knows that the earth is flat, that marijuana cures cancer, and that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful god who cares about your sex life.
Sure, maybe there are artists who make most of their money on tour, but most musicians tour to get people to buy the album. You've heard the phrase "go on tour to support the album"? Have you ever heard "sell the album to support the tour"?
The idea that touring is where the money is, is wrong. It's a moral justification for downloading music, but it just doesn't hold water. Personally, I don't pretend that artists don't make any money off album sales; I justify stealing by "I wouldn't have bought it anyway".
But, I went to Linux a few weeks ago, and don't have sound set up yet. So I'm certainly glad I have my CDs to listen to.
I saw a ticket book once, when I was a kid. All the E tickets were used up, of course. I think there was a couple of the tamer tickets left in it. But they discontinued their use before I ever went to Disneyland.
1. The regulations exist 2. The market works pretty well
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it? Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Re:Whassa matter, the new kid scare you?
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AtheOS
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· Score: 5
Once upon a time, all the linux users were hard core hackers. Then it became easier, got a larger following, and that necessarily brought down the curve. There's a great quote from Bjarne Stroustrup about this phenomenon in C++:
When C++ was new, one of the things that pleased me most was that discussions about C++ were so much better informed than discussions about most other languages, that the understanding of key concepts were so much better in C++ groups than in, say, C and Pascal groups, and that groups such as comp.lang.c++ were so much more polite and supportive than that of other groups.
Clearly, I thought naively, C++ attracts a much better class of programmers, learning C++ helps people to absorb the key concepts of good programming/design, and the resulting success makes people more tolerant and helpful.
I was wrong. The phenomenon was real, but it had little to do with C++. In a small dedicated community, life is relatively easy. people do their homework, people have access to reasonable sources of information, gross errors and misconceptions are corrected before they can cause significant harm, compilers and teaching materials are up-to-date, etc.
Now, not all of this translates directly to Linux: there's a big difference between a programming language and an OS. But the phenomenon is the same. Right now, the average Linux user is much more computer savvy than the average windows or mac user. The "average" EROS, AtheOS, JavaOS, or even OpenBSD user is probably significantly more computer savvy than the average Linux user. Just as you aren't going to adopt an emerging language as your first programming language, you aren't going to start with a fringe operating system. But using these systems doesn't necessarily make you better at anything.
The moral: expect Linux users to become as irrational and fanatical as users of any other operating system. If you don't like it, the only real solution is to stop thinking of "the linux community" and find some other way to define the people you want to identify with.
Maybe I read too much science fiction, but in as few words as possible, I want to help write cyberspace.
You know, that place where you can actually buy stuff online, with ecash, and cryptographically backed up anonymity (or pseudonymity). And let's not forget AI. I really want to build an AI.
I'm not interested in "software that is interesting". I'm interested in "software that makes the world interesting." Zero Knowledge is opening an office in San Jose, and might be starting to hier junior people about the time I graduate. That would be a cool place to work. Or anyone working on intelligent agents or reputation managers (moderate the entire web).
Sure, most of this is pointless. It's just toys for their own sake. But Snow Crash wouldn't have sold so many copies if the Metaverse wasn't more interesting than the real world.
Freedom of speech is absolute. There are no exceptions. You have the right to say whatever you want, unless you are infringing someone else's rights.
This doesn't derive from some bullshit "endowed by their creator" crap. It derives from the simple fact that no one has any basis for a right to silence me. If you say you have a right to tell me I can't be a racist, it's your place to justify it. You have no more right to tell me I can't go around saying "aryans uber alles" than I do to tell the jehovah's witness they can't go around saying "refuse transfusions".
If those items are causing grief to any individual, that individual should grow some thicker skin, or should bury their head in the sand. The holocaust happened. Ignoring it won't undo it. There are neo-nazis in France. Telling them they can't use the internet to communicate won't make them decent people.
What you are advocating is mind control. It's forcing your particular world view on everyone. Isn't this exactly the problem with the nazis to begin with? Maybe we should burn all books advocating censorship?
If you think anyone, any county, any collection of bullies who call themselves "parliament" or "congress" or the "diet" or the "pope" has a right to censor anyone, tell me why. Where does he get this right? If the french have the right to prohibit sales of nazi memorabilia, do you think the Ayatollah has a right to prohibit the sale of Salman Rushdie's work?
Does anyone have the right to censor anyone else, or not? Only some people? How do we know who has a right to censor what? Do we come and ask you whenever it comes up? I mean, I'm glad you could clear it up that this particular instance is one in which the people we don't like should be censored, but what about other situations? Like, should people who say der Fuehrer is a little on the nutty side be sent to the camps as well? How about people who say Mao isn't all that great?
Does it depend on where the people live? I mean, does the Ayatollah's jurisdiction to prohibit Salman Rushdie from writing only apply to people in Iran buying Rushdie's books, or to anyone anywhere buying a book originally written in Iran, or only off a website hosted in Iran?
As an atheist, I'm offended by about 99% of all religious sites on the web. Does this mean they should be taken down? As a libertarian, I'm offended by assholes like you who think they have the right to dictate their morality to the whole fucking world. Do I have the right to ask Rob to yank your account and delete this post?
The sad thing is that most of the people on the planet think that you are being reasonable. I wish I could live somewhere else. My options for other countries to move to are even being eroded as the UN and other international organizations further homogenize the planet. The US seems the best place to live right now, but that's sort of like saying "I'd rather have the picture of the man being beheaded on my wall than the one of the child being run over by a lawn mower".
Before you advocate this moralistic imperialism, I urge you to consider whether your morals are any more objective than anyone elses, and what would happen if everyone attempted to force their morals on everyone else like you are encouraging.
Try margin widths expressed as percentages with a float to the side. Opera renders this by interpretting the it as x% of the available space. This seems to me what is implied by the box model. But IE 5 interprets these as x% of the total width of the containing box, which makes absolutely zero sense to me.
I don't have a spec handy, and I don't remember whether it's width or margin that breaks it, but I do know I wanted to fucking strangle the IE developers after spending 4 hours tweaking my new homepage in IE and then having it break horribly in Opera, NS and Mozilla.
It turned me off to web design, and sent me back to text only, 1993 style pages until Mozilla is actually usable.
I seem to remember that PNG specifies that the pixels should not be pre-multiplied.
I don't remember what the reasoning for this was. I don't really understand what the problem is in what you are describing. Are you just saying that you have to be careful not to multiply twice? Or is there a fundamental flaw in non-pre-multiplied image data?
It seems to me that the only problem is that losing some of the data to quantization, though it seems like it would go the other way -- pre-multiplied would degrade it.
My monitor is currently at about 104dpi. What resolution is the designer's monitor at? Should he say "oh, 11 pixels looks good on my 19" at 1168x864". Great. Now I can't even read it. If I'm reading on web TV, I probably don't want my fonts taking up 11 pixels.
A point is a well defined unit. I'm not 100% sure of the standard, but Lie and Bos define it at 1/72 inch in Cascading Style Sheets, 2nd ed. This would work find for me. My computer could render 12pt as 17 pixels, web tv could render it as a bit mapped 8 pixel font, and it would be the same size on both displays.
Once Mozilla becomes stable, I might switch to it just so that I can play with the source and turn off: 1) floor all font sizes at about 9pt (not 9px) 2) break defaultStatus and status 3) make open() do nothing when called by onUnload or onLoad
Yeah, supposedly, when Hunt for Red October came out, the CIA knocked on his door and said "who leaked you this information". He had actually figured out a lot of the capabilities of US subs from published sources (who's contracting with whom, what tests are done, published specs, etc.).
Who would have thought that NASA has trouble being consistent in their units?
The page on the solar sail craft says "The emphasis of the current research effort is on the interstellar precursor missions designed to set the stage for missions to other star systems later this century."
I'm having trouble deciding whether we're supposed to read this as someone from the 20th century having difficulty learning anything from a 747, or whether NASA is planning on really speeding up the timeline.
I just finished taking intermediate micro, and one thing that I came away with is that libertarians spend way too much time explaining away how public goods will be provided, and all the efficiency arguments, and way too little time on antitrust.
Anti-trust is probably the biggest weakness on the economic side of libertarian theory. The biggest weakness overall is probably what do you do with children? I mean, babies are supposed to be pretty much property, but adults are supposed to be free to do whatever they want. So can a 16 year old refuse to go to church?
The first thing to say about anti-trust is that it isn't as big a problem as people think it is. Sure, we're getting overcharged for CDs, but most of that is just a transfer from consumers to record companies, but money never actually disappears from the economy, so the stockholders in record companies have more money to spend. This is becoming more obvious to people now than in the past, because people are starting to realize that big companies aren't own by rich megalomaniacs (they just run them), but by retirement funds, mutual funds, and that guy down the hall who doesn't have any kids to support.
But there is an actual loss caused by incorrect incentives for the number of CDs produced. You buy less CDs because they're too expensive. It's hard to estimate what this is. A figure mmy econ professor gave was that these Dead-Weight Losses add up to about 1% of the economy, according to a study in the 1950s. There are a lot of reasons this is so small. One is that most things you buy aren't controlled by an oligopoly. Another is that the number of CDs sold at oligopoly prices isn't that much different than the number under a competetive industry.
The one that probably offers the most hope to libertarians is that it's very hard to keep a cartel going. OPEC is around 10 members, and they have trouble keeping everyone in line (remember, OPEC is "legal"). In the music industry, it's probably fairly easy for the producers to keep the price a little above the competetive price, because there isn't much incentive to try to sell more CDs by lowering the price from $17 to $15 when your total cost with all the middlemen is $13, since you wouldn't necessarily sell twice as many CDs at the lower cost. But if the cost is $13, and the cartel price is $25, you've got a lot of room to make some money. Drop the price to $20 and you can make $7/CD on a higher number of CDs. So the higher the price is, the harder it is to keep the cartel going.
The other libertarian argument is that a lot of cartels couldn't exist without favors from government. Some that I can think of specific to record companies would be: 1. Government will go to a lot of trouble to prosecute copyright violations, and the violater will be severely punished. The punishment is out of line with the damage. 2. The government will prohibit sale of stuff that might impact the record companies income, like taxing recordable media, or DCMA enforcement against Apex (regionless DVD player). 3. Copyright is a government granted monopoly. Perhaps copyright could be modified to require everyone (including the copyright holder) to license the work in question at the going rate, and then revenues go back to the copyright holder.
One that isn't specific to record companies is that the government allows for companies to commit criminal acts with no liability for the management. This tends to encourage very large corporations. It might be necessary to keep the capital markets working, but there might be other ways to do it.
I'm actually an anarchist, and think that the existence of government is itself immoral, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement even without doing away with government. Some of the above may be unconsciously stolen from David Friedman's Law's Order, on the economic analysis of law. It's available online at http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
"(note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people)"
Regarding the usenet law ("first person to call their opponent a nazi loses"), I didn't call him a nazi, I called him a fascist. Fascism has connotations of totalitarianism, and of racist nationalism, but it also describes the economic system uniquely (fascists want the economy run in a certain way). If someone advocates the same economic system, and I call them a fascist, I am suggesting to them that many of the arguments they are making have been argued and found pointless a long time ago, and that since they are probably not a fascist, they should probably reconsider the effect of what they are recommending.
I alternate between "fascist" and "socialist" for political ideologies I don't agree with. I know which one applies in which situation. I also use "fascist" to refer to republicans who want to control your every thought, and limit "socialist" to those who think that the best society is where everyone is an altruist, and think this society can be obtained.
I never call anyone a "Nazi" or a "Communist", because I've never met anyone who could be accurately described as such. A term a lot of people I know use is "statist", but people who don't follow rabid libertarian political theory might not be familiar with it.
The statement I was responding to said that we don't need to consider whether the governemnt has a right to interfere. Whether the government has a right to interfere or not isn't the issue. The issue is that the poster didn't think we even need to ask that question. To my mind, this implicitly asserts that the nation is more important than the individual, the characteristic of fascism.
I did a search on Melvyl, which searches all the UC's, and also Stanford and a couple other universities' libraries. I found three pre-IDG uses of "for dummies" in the title of a book.
Author: Sclar, Deanna. Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor. New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
Author: Sclar, Deanna. Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor. Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983.
Author: Winenger, Dwight. Title: Music for dummies / Dwight Winenger. Desert Hot Springs, Ca. : Minuscule University Press, c1981.
Someone ought to buy the rights to "Music for Dummies" and use it for a music web site. I'm sure it would really piss off IDG, since it isn't going to be good for public relations to sue someone who was using their "trademark" before they were.
I found one book using "for Dummies" published in 1997. I'm curious what IDG has done about this. My guess is that it's non-commercial, and so out of their reach.
Author: Morebeck, Nancy Justus. Title: Census for dummies : a quick guide "by example" to use indexes, soundex, CDs and the census ; includes a soundex coding card / by Nancy Justus Morebeck. Vacaville, CA : N. Morebeck, c1997. Description: [7] leaves : chiefly ill.;c28 cm.
Notes: Title from cover.
What's interesting is who is the author of the Auto Repair for Dummies published back in 1976:
1. Sclar, Deanna. Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor. New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
2. Sclar, Deanna. Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor. Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983. 3. Sclar, Deanna. Buying a car for dummies / by Deanna Sclar. Foster City, CA : IDG Books, c1998. Series title: --For dummies.
First of all, I don't think we have to question whether the government has a "right" to interfere.
Why not? If you and I agree to do something together, and write and sign a contract saying who does what, and who gets what and so on, then later on, I decide I don't like the contract, and want the government to modify it in my favor, is this right? Why should it be different if I sell you something on the condition you don't make a copy of it?
I'll assume here that we're talking about the US government here. The US government is granted the authority to do certain things in the constitution. Stopping "anything MS does to hurt society" is not one of the duties enumerated.
Copyright law does not exist "solely for social benefit". Copyright law exists "to promote science and the useful arts". This doesn't say, "once you have a product, copyright law will only help you so far as your actions benefit society". IP law is a method of providing for property rights in non-physical things. Property rights are necessary because without them people have little incentive to do anything productive. How hard would you work if your entire paycheck was taken in taxes to be used "solely for social benefit"?
The issue in the microsoft case is that microsoft is using it's control over the application software market to prevent entry into the operating systems market. Think: who's most likely to go into the operating systems market? Dot-coms? Hardware vendors? Or maybe large-application developers? Netscape or Corel are the types of companies that can develop a competetor to Windows. AOL/Netscape and Corel are in fact doing that right now. It's based on Linux, but that's beside the point. Microsoft's position of control of the OS market helps them make sure competetors never get big enough to enter the OS market.
Except for this issue of preventing competition in the OS market, Microsoft doesn't have any incentives to try to take over the application software market. Or, they may want to take it over, but if they do so, it isn't really going to harm the consumer. I think this is refered to as the one-monopoly rent theorem, or internalization of competetive efficiencies.
What we need to do is force all MS desktop OSs to be standards-compliant whenever possible, and force all non-standard protocols and APIs (and fileformats, etc) to be open and non-obfuscated, for at least a few more years. (It'd be great to do that for *all* MS products, but they don't have a monopoly in any others, so perhaps it wouldn't be fair. Feh.)
This shows you really don't get it. Sure, we'd all be better off if we just had the federal government raid Bill Gates bank account and use that to reduce our taxes, but that wouldn't be a good idea, because it reduces the incentives for people to try to become rich. And the only way you can become rich is by producing something people want (or think they want). If you don't think incentives are important, look at how "ideal" the soviet union was. There were no incentives, so no one worked.
I'm pretty sure the US currently has an extra tax on "windfall profits". This is defined as like some really high percentage gain on an investment. But what if a risk should be taken? Who's going to gamble five years of their life on a risky business if they don't have the potential to become filthy rich through it? If there's an investment that could give me 10000% returns, but has a 99.7% chance of failing, I might do it, but not if the government is going to come in, and say "Windfall Profits! Give us 90% of all profits above 500%" (or whatever it is).
How exactly is Microsoft "fucking its customers in the ass"? By making crappy products? Everyone selling software to consumers does that. Go pick up a consumer level graphics program (Print Shop, Print Artist, Print Fiasco, whatever). You'll be horrified at how completely unusable they are for anyone more skilled with computers than my cat. Buggy software? Sure, compared to Apache, or Linux it's buggy, but it's not too bad compared to what is shipped by other proprietary software vendors. When was the last time you saw "stable" and "netscape" in the same sentence? But it's usable, and that's good enough for the desktop. By pricing to high? This is plausible, given that they do have a monopoly, we would expect them to. But how much cheaper would computers sold to consumers be if they had a free OS? Not that much. Windows 98 isn't a big portion of the price. Yeah, they screw people on NT, but the people who buy NT are the people can actually shop around and say, "I'll just run Linux, and save the $2000 in MS licenses". Does anyone think that MIS people wouldn't be willing to go over to Linux if MS jacked the price up high enough? So MS can't really overprice by that much.
My feeling is that since the technology industry is so volitile, the usual issues of regulating monopolies don't matter. Just because you have a monopoly today doesn't mean you will tomorrow. And the more you try to use your monopoly to screw people, the less likely you will have one tomorrow. But more importantly, regulating the computer industry would be bad, because regulators aren't anywhere near as good at guessing what should be done than venture capitalists are. People like to pretend that it's just Microsoft, but you know the government would never consider stopping there. Remember when the government got involved in civil rights, it was about making sure the KKK didn't prevent people from voting. Now the government has gotten to the point where they consider a disparity between the number of men and women who play sports at a school as absolute evidence of discrimination.
And don't bring up "the government built the internet". The government didn't build the internet any more than the Navy invented microwave ovens.
--Kevin
(note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people)
The registry is just an implementation detail. RPM keeps track of which packages are installed, though I would guess it does so in flat files.
It does have to do with RPM because one of the features is being able to tell what version of something is installed, which, in additional to making it easier to install stuff, is the purpose of RPM.
The only possibly novel thing is checking the website automatically, which probably has prior art. I can't remember when I first saw something automatically check the web for updates, but I doubt Microsoft invented it. The patent abstract sounds like it's describing Windows Update.
The current options for obtaining music you want are either: 1) Pay $16/CD 2) Pirate it using Napster There are other options, but these are the main ones. Most people would prefer to see artists get their due from the music, but paying $16 for 12 songs isn't always worth it. And paying $1/song from emusic.com doesn't make sense because for most people, MP3s are not as convenient as CDs, and don't have quite the sound quality. Indeed, I bought S&M on CD the day it was released because I want to be able to play it in the stereo, and on my discman, and in the car, etc. I could have downloaded it the next day, but that inconvenient. In contrast, when someone recommends something that I don't really know I would like, or something that I wouldn't listen to much, I might download it with Napster. But I would probably also pay a dime or a quarter to download it from a legitimate source. And the cost to the record label & artist is much lower for online distribution (no CD to manufacture). So, given this use of MP3s as low cost sample, would you support making your music available online (possibly in a low quality format like 128kbps) for a price significantly lower buying the equivalent CD?
Even if we have near light speed vehicles, radio waves are still faster. Barring communication via quantum entanglement (which seems fairly unlikely), the speed of light will likely be the limiting factor in social homogeneity once we start spreading out. This isn't entirely a bad thing, though. We're already too homogenized now, in my opinion.
Is "freedom" placing restrictions on how your code is to be used, or is "freedom" placing no restrictions on how your code can be used?
To me, it's quite clear that the GPL is the most restrictive non-commercial open source license. It may be necessary to encourage software development, at least in some cases, but it no more expands freedom than does putting up "No Trespassing" signs. Obviously, freedom includes the right to put up "No Trespassing" signs, but the signs themselves are a reduction in freedom, not an increase. I'm all for letting people keep others off their property, but not because it's morally "good".
In short, I don't dislike the GPL, but I think it is misleading to say the GPL is about freedom.
Also, your phrase "boycotting non-free software" really gives it away. If it is truly in everyone's best interest, then the boycott is unnecessary. Boycotts are used when there is a product you would buy but you have idealogical or moral objections to some aspect of how it is produced. E.g. No Grapes; Boycott Starbucks until they supply "fair trade" coffee. I don't necessarily object to boycotts either -- I'll never buy anything from Walmart, because I don't like their politics. I don't not buy from Walmart because it's in my best interests to shop elsewhere.
This has been mentioned, but I'd like to take a crack at an explaination that might make sense to people who still don't get it.
You've seen chess problems, where you're given a board set up, and it says, "white to play and win in one". Which means, white can checkmate on the next move. When you see "white to play and win in two", it means that you make your first move so that whatever move black makes, you can checkmate them the move after that.
To Solve chess means to find the solution to one of the following problems:
1. From the initial board set up (all pieces in their original positions), find the answer to "white to play and win in n", where n is maybe 50.
2. From the initial board setup, find the answer to "white to play and draw in n".
3. From any of the 12 possible positions after white has made its first move, solve "black to play and win in n". Repeat this for the 11 other positions.
4. From any of the 12 possible positions, solve "black to play and win in n".
Since chess is a game of complete information, it's likely that there is a solution to one of these four problems. There might be more than one. There can be a solution to both 4 and 2, but there cannot be a solution to any other combination of these -- they are mutually exclusive.
If I remember my game theory correctly, any game of complete information is solvable, so one of these is the solution. No one knows which it is (although 1 and 2/4 seem more likely than 3, just intuitively.)
Funny that this was posted today. I'm working on a project for my CS class to write a program to play a simple contrived game well. We still aren't able to search the whole game tree, even for a simple game. I suspect a high end PC with a lot of RAM and hard disk space could solve it, but we don't have the time.
My studies have found that nearly 100% of people who have spent time in state prison are criminals. We need to stop putting people in jail, because it causes crime.
If you think it's the type of program that people might go out and buy a book for, include a manual.
It doesn't have to be a 600-page "everything the developers ever envisioned for this piece of software, and how to use it, in excruciating detail", but it should at least allow someone to learn the program without refering to online help, and enough to tell them how to use the most common features.
If people didn't want printed manuals, how would SCC stay in business? (Are they still in business? maybe bad example.) People buy printouts of stuff they can get online for free. Clearly, they like paper.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought this through a while back, and here's what I came up with. I'd appreciate if someone could tell me where it breaks down.
We know that the reals can be mapped onto the reals from 0 to 1. So, consider the following sequence of numbers:
000000000000000...
100000000000000...
010000000000000...
110000000000000...
001000000000000...
...
Just a progression of binary integers. Okay. Now, consider these as binary expansions of a real number less than one:
0.10000000000000...
So we have a mapping from the above to all reals less than one. We can also consider this a mapping onto the power set of the integers:
010010010000000... {1, 4, 7}
So we have the same progression mapping onto both sets of interest. But, aleph0 of the reals (terminating fractions) will be encoded twice. It seems like we could in some way "subtract these out", since subtracting a lower order of infinity from a higher order should still give the higher order. Also, the diagonalization argument that Cantor used doesn't work, because the number generated is:
0.1111111111111111111111... = 1
But we said that we are limiting it to numbers less than one.
But, each of the bit sequences we are using to encode a subset or a real also encodes an integer. So the above shows that:
|reals| = |power set of integers| = |integers|
Which we know is false because everyone says so. So, where is the flaw?
--Kevin
(Everybody really knows that most money is made on tour!)
Everybody knows that the earth is flat, that marijuana cures cancer, and that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful god who cares about your sex life.
Sure, maybe there are artists who make most of their money on tour, but most musicians tour to get people to buy the album. You've heard the phrase "go on tour to support the album"? Have you ever heard "sell the album to support the tour"?
The idea that touring is where the money is, is wrong. It's a moral justification for downloading music, but it just doesn't hold water. Personally, I don't pretend that artists don't make any money off album sales; I justify stealing by "I wouldn't have bought it anyway".
But, I went to Linux a few weeks ago, and don't have sound set up yet. So I'm certainly glad I have my CDs to listen to.
--Kevin
I saw a ticket book once, when I was a kid. All the E tickets were used up, of course. I think there was a couple of the tamer tickets left in it. But they discontinued their use before I ever went to Disneyland.
1. The regulations exist
2. The market works pretty well
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it? Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Now, not all of this translates directly to Linux: there's a big difference between a programming language and an OS. But the phenomenon is the same. Right now, the average Linux user is much more computer savvy than the average windows or mac user. The "average" EROS, AtheOS, JavaOS, or even OpenBSD user is probably significantly more computer savvy than the average Linux user. Just as you aren't going to adopt an emerging language as your first programming language, you aren't going to start with a fringe operating system. But using these systems doesn't necessarily make you better at anything.
The moral: expect Linux users to become as irrational and fanatical as users of any other operating system. If you don't like it, the only real solution is to stop thinking of "the linux community" and find some other way to define the people you want to identify with.
--Kevin
Maybe I read too much science fiction, but in as few words as possible, I want to help write cyberspace.
You know, that place where you can actually buy stuff online, with ecash, and cryptographically backed up anonymity (or pseudonymity). And let's not forget AI. I really want to build an AI.
I'm not interested in "software that is interesting". I'm interested in "software that makes the world interesting." Zero Knowledge is opening an office in San Jose, and might be starting to hier junior people about the time I graduate. That would be a cool place to work. Or anyone working on intelligent agents or reputation managers (moderate the entire web).
Sure, most of this is pointless. It's just toys for their own sake. But Snow Crash wouldn't have sold so many copies if the Metaverse wasn't more interesting than the real world.
--Kevin
Freedom of speech is absolute. There are no exceptions. You have the right to say whatever you want, unless you are infringing someone else's rights.
This doesn't derive from some bullshit "endowed by their creator" crap. It derives from the simple fact that no one has any basis for a right to silence me. If you say you have a right to tell me I can't be a racist, it's your place to justify it. You have no more right to tell me I can't go around saying "aryans uber alles" than I do to tell the jehovah's witness they can't go around saying "refuse transfusions".
If those items are causing grief to any individual, that individual should grow some thicker skin, or should bury their head in the sand. The holocaust happened. Ignoring it won't undo it. There are neo-nazis in France. Telling them they can't use the internet to communicate won't make them decent people.
What you are advocating is mind control. It's forcing your particular world view on everyone. Isn't this exactly the problem with the nazis to begin with? Maybe we should burn all books advocating censorship?
If you think anyone, any county, any collection of bullies who call themselves "parliament" or "congress" or the "diet" or the "pope" has a right to censor anyone, tell me why. Where does he get this right? If the french have the right to prohibit sales of nazi memorabilia, do you think the Ayatollah has a right to prohibit the sale of Salman Rushdie's work?
Does anyone have the right to censor anyone else, or not? Only some people? How do we know who has a right to censor what? Do we come and ask you whenever it comes up? I mean, I'm glad you could clear it up that this particular instance is one in which the people we don't like should be censored, but what about other situations? Like, should people who say der Fuehrer is a little on the nutty side be sent to the camps as well? How about people who say Mao isn't all that great?
Does it depend on where the people live? I mean, does the Ayatollah's jurisdiction to prohibit Salman Rushdie from writing only apply to people in Iran buying Rushdie's books, or to anyone anywhere buying a book originally written in Iran, or only off a website hosted in Iran?
As an atheist, I'm offended by about 99% of all religious sites on the web. Does this mean they should be taken down? As a libertarian, I'm offended by assholes like you who think they have the right to dictate their morality to the whole fucking world. Do I have the right to ask Rob to yank your account and delete this post?
The sad thing is that most of the people on the planet think that you are being reasonable. I wish I could live somewhere else. My options for other countries to move to are even being eroded as the UN and other international organizations further homogenize the planet. The US seems the best place to live right now, but that's sort of like saying "I'd rather have the picture of the man being beheaded on my wall than the one of the child being run over by a lawn mower".
Before you advocate this moralistic imperialism, I urge you to consider whether your morals are any more objective than anyone elses, and what would happen if everyone attempted to force their morals on everyone else like you are encouraging.
--Kevin
Try margin widths expressed as percentages with a float to the side. Opera renders this by interpretting the it as x% of the available space. This seems to me what is implied by the box model. But IE 5 interprets these as x% of the total width of the containing box, which makes absolutely zero sense to me.
I don't have a spec handy, and I don't remember whether it's width or margin that breaks it, but I do know I wanted to fucking strangle the IE developers after spending 4 hours tweaking my new homepage in IE and then having it break horribly in Opera, NS and Mozilla.
It turned me off to web design, and sent me back to text only, 1993 style pages until Mozilla is actually usable.
I seem to remember that PNG specifies that the pixels should not be pre-multiplied.
I don't remember what the reasoning for this was. I don't really understand what the problem is in what you are describing. Are you just saying that you have to be careful not to multiply twice? Or is there a fundamental flaw in non-pre-multiplied image data?
It seems to me that the only problem is that losing some of the data to quantization, though it seems like it would go the other way -- pre-multiplied would degrade it.
--Kevin
My monitor is currently at about 104dpi. What resolution is the designer's monitor at? Should he say "oh, 11 pixels looks good on my 19" at 1168x864". Great. Now I can't even read it. If I'm reading on web TV, I probably don't want my fonts taking up 11 pixels.
A point is a well defined unit. I'm not 100% sure of the standard, but Lie and Bos define it at 1/72 inch in Cascading Style Sheets, 2nd ed. This would work find for me. My computer could render 12pt as 17 pixels, web tv could render it as a bit mapped 8 pixel font, and it would be the same size on both displays.
Once Mozilla becomes stable, I might switch to it just so that I can play with the source and turn off:
1) floor all font sizes at about 9pt (not 9px)
2) break defaultStatus and status
3) make open() do nothing when called by onUnload or onLoad
--Kevin
Yeah, supposedly, when Hunt for Red October came out, the CIA knocked on his door and said "who leaked you this information". He had actually figured out a lot of the capabilities of US subs from published sources (who's contracting with whom, what tests are done, published specs, etc.).
Pretty impressive.
Who would have thought that NASA has trouble being consistent in their units?
The page on the solar sail craft says "The emphasis of the current research effort is on the interstellar precursor missions designed to set the stage for missions to other star systems later this century."
I'm having trouble deciding whether we're supposed to read this as someone from the 20th century having difficulty learning anything from a 747, or whether NASA is planning on really speeding up the timeline.
I loved it. I think it's going in my .sig.
I run linux. Is there any way for me to unzip this file?
I just finished taking intermediate micro, and one thing that I came away with is that libertarians spend way too much time explaining away how public goods will be provided, and all the efficiency arguments, and way too little time on antitrust.
Anti-trust is probably the biggest weakness on the economic side of libertarian theory. The biggest weakness overall is probably what do you do with children? I mean, babies are supposed to be pretty much property, but adults are supposed to be free to do whatever they want. So can a 16 year old refuse to go to church?
The first thing to say about anti-trust is that it isn't as big a problem as people think it is. Sure, we're getting overcharged for CDs, but most of that is just a transfer from consumers to record companies, but money never actually disappears from the economy, so the stockholders in record companies have more money to spend. This is becoming more obvious to people now than in the past, because people are starting to realize that big companies aren't own by rich megalomaniacs (they just run them), but by retirement funds, mutual funds, and that guy down the hall who doesn't have any kids to support.
But there is an actual loss caused by incorrect incentives for the number of CDs produced. You buy less CDs because they're too expensive. It's hard to estimate what this is. A figure mmy econ professor gave was that these Dead-Weight Losses add up to about 1% of the economy, according to a study in the 1950s. There are a lot of reasons this is so small. One is that most things you buy aren't controlled by an oligopoly. Another is that the number of CDs sold at oligopoly prices isn't that much different than the number under a competetive industry.
The one that probably offers the most hope to libertarians is that it's very hard to keep a cartel going. OPEC is around 10 members, and they have trouble keeping everyone in line (remember, OPEC is "legal"). In the music industry, it's probably fairly easy for the producers to keep the price a little above the competetive price, because there isn't much incentive to try to sell more CDs by lowering the price from $17 to $15 when your total cost with all the middlemen is $13, since you wouldn't necessarily sell twice as many CDs at the lower cost. But if the cost is $13, and the cartel price is $25, you've got a lot of room to make some money. Drop the price to $20 and you can make $7/CD on a higher number of CDs. So the higher the price is, the harder it is to keep the cartel going.
The other libertarian argument is that a lot of cartels couldn't exist without favors from government. Some that I can think of specific to record companies would be:
1. Government will go to a lot of trouble to prosecute copyright violations, and the violater will be severely punished. The punishment is out of line with the damage.
2. The government will prohibit sale of stuff that might impact the record companies income, like taxing recordable media, or DCMA enforcement against Apex (regionless DVD player).
3. Copyright is a government granted monopoly. Perhaps copyright could be modified to require everyone (including the copyright holder) to license the work in question at the going rate, and then revenues go back to the copyright holder.
One that isn't specific to record companies is that the government allows for companies to commit criminal acts with no liability for the management. This tends to encourage very large corporations. It might be necessary to keep the capital markets working, but there might be other ways to do it.
I'm actually an anarchist, and think that the existence of government is itself immoral, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement even without doing away with government. Some of the above may be unconsciously stolen from David Friedman's Law's Order, on the economic analysis of law. It's available online at http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
--Kevin
Hello? To quote my original post:
"(note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people)"
Regarding the usenet law ("first person to call their opponent a nazi loses"), I didn't call him a nazi, I called him a fascist. Fascism has connotations of totalitarianism, and of racist nationalism, but it also describes the economic system uniquely (fascists want the economy run in a certain way). If someone advocates the same economic system, and I call them a fascist, I am suggesting to them that many of the arguments they are making have been argued and found pointless a long time ago, and that since they are probably not a fascist, they should probably reconsider the effect of what they are recommending.
I alternate between "fascist" and "socialist" for political ideologies I don't agree with. I know which one applies in which situation. I also use "fascist" to refer to republicans who want to control your every thought, and limit "socialist" to those who think that the best society is where everyone is an altruist, and think this society can be obtained.
I never call anyone a "Nazi" or a "Communist", because I've never met anyone who could be accurately described as such. A term a lot of people I know use is "statist", but people who don't follow rabid libertarian political theory might not be familiar with it.
The statement I was responding to said that we don't need to consider whether the governemnt has a right to interfere. Whether the government has a right to interfere or not isn't the issue. The issue is that the poster didn't think we even need to ask that question. To my mind, this implicitly asserts that the nation is more important than the individual, the characteristic of fascism.
I did a search on Melvyl, which searches all the UC's, and also Stanford and a couple other universities' libraries. I found three pre-IDG uses of "for dummies" in the title of a book.
;c28 cm.
Author: Sclar, Deanna.
Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical
advisor. New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
Author: Sclar, Deanna.
Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical
advisor. Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983.
Author: Winenger, Dwight.
Title: Music for dummies / Dwight Winenger. Desert Hot Springs, Ca. :
Minuscule University Press, c1981.
Someone ought to buy the rights to "Music for Dummies" and use it for a music web site. I'm sure it would really piss off IDG, since it isn't going to be good for public relations to sue someone who was using their "trademark" before they were.
I found one book using "for Dummies" published in 1997. I'm curious what IDG has done about this. My guess is that it's non-commercial, and so out of their reach.
Author: Morebeck, Nancy Justus.
Title: Census for dummies : a quick guide "by example" to use indexes,
soundex, CDs and the census ; includes a soundex coding card /
by Nancy Justus Morebeck. Vacaville, CA : N. Morebeck, c1997.
Description: [7] leaves : chiefly ill.
Notes: Title from cover.
What's interesting is who is the author of the Auto Repair for Dummies published back in 1976:
1. Sclar, Deanna.
Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor.
New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
2. Sclar, Deanna.
Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor.
Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983.
3. Sclar, Deanna.
Buying a car for dummies / by Deanna Sclar. Foster City, CA : IDG Books,
c1998.
Series title: --For dummies.
She's now writing for IDG.
Why not? If you and I agree to do something together, and write and sign a contract saying who does what, and who gets what and so on, then later on, I decide I don't like the contract, and want the government to modify it in my favor, is this right? Why should it be different if I sell you something on the condition you don't make a copy of it?
I'll assume here that we're talking about the US government here. The US government is granted the authority to do certain things in the constitution. Stopping "anything MS does to hurt society" is not one of the duties enumerated.
Copyright law does not exist "solely for social benefit". Copyright law exists "to promote science and the useful arts". This doesn't say, "once you have a product, copyright law will only help you so far as your actions benefit society". IP law is a method of providing for property rights in non-physical things. Property rights are necessary because without them people have little incentive to do anything productive. How hard would you work if your entire paycheck was taken in taxes to be used "solely for social benefit"?
The issue in the microsoft case is that microsoft is using it's control over the application software market to prevent entry into the operating systems market. Think: who's most likely to go into the operating systems market? Dot-coms? Hardware vendors? Or maybe large-application developers? Netscape or Corel are the types of companies that can develop a competetor to Windows. AOL/Netscape and Corel are in fact doing that right now. It's based on Linux, but that's beside the point. Microsoft's position of control of the OS market helps them make sure competetors never get big enough to enter the OS market.
Except for this issue of preventing competition in the OS market, Microsoft doesn't have any incentives to try to take over the application software market. Or, they may want to take it over, but if they do so, it isn't really going to harm the consumer. I think this is refered to as the one-monopoly rent theorem, or internalization of competetive efficiencies.
This shows you really don't get it. Sure, we'd all be better off if we just had the federal government raid Bill Gates bank account and use that to reduce our taxes, but that wouldn't be a good idea, because it reduces the incentives for people to try to become rich. And the only way you can become rich is by producing something people want (or think they want). If you don't think incentives are important, look at how "ideal" the soviet union was. There were no incentives, so no one worked.
I'm pretty sure the US currently has an extra tax on "windfall profits". This is defined as like some really high percentage gain on an investment. But what if a risk should be taken? Who's going to gamble five years of their life on a risky business if they don't have the potential to become filthy rich through it? If there's an investment that could give me 10000% returns, but has a 99.7% chance of failing, I might do it, but not if the government is going to come in, and say "Windfall Profits! Give us 90% of all profits above 500%" (or whatever it is).
How exactly is Microsoft "fucking its customers in the ass"? By making crappy products? Everyone selling software to consumers does that. Go pick up a consumer level graphics program (Print Shop, Print Artist, Print Fiasco, whatever). You'll be horrified at how completely unusable they are for anyone more skilled with computers than my cat. Buggy software? Sure, compared to Apache, or Linux it's buggy, but it's not too bad compared to what is shipped by other proprietary software vendors. When was the last time you saw "stable" and "netscape" in the same sentence? But it's usable, and that's good enough for the desktop. By pricing to high? This is plausible, given that they do have a monopoly, we would expect them to. But how much cheaper would computers sold to consumers be if they had a free OS? Not that much. Windows 98 isn't a big portion of the price. Yeah, they screw people on NT, but the people who buy NT are the people can actually shop around and say, "I'll just run Linux, and save the $2000 in MS licenses". Does anyone think that MIS people wouldn't be willing to go over to Linux if MS jacked the price up high enough? So MS can't really overprice by that much.
My feeling is that since the technology industry is so volitile, the usual issues of regulating monopolies don't matter. Just because you have a monopoly today doesn't mean you will tomorrow. And the more you try to use your monopoly to screw people, the less likely you will have one tomorrow. But more importantly, regulating the computer industry would be bad, because regulators aren't anywhere near as good at guessing what should be done than venture capitalists are.
People like to pretend that it's just Microsoft, but you know the government would never consider stopping there. Remember when the government got involved in civil rights, it was about making sure the KKK didn't prevent people from voting. Now the government has gotten to the point where they consider a disparity between the number of men and women who play sports at a school as absolute evidence of discrimination.
And don't bring up "the government built the internet". The government didn't build the internet any more than the Navy invented microwave ovens.
--Kevin
(note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people)
The registry is just an implementation detail. RPM keeps track of which packages are installed, though I would guess it does so in flat files.
It does have to do with RPM because one of the features is being able to tell what version of something is installed, which, in additional to making it easier to install stuff, is the purpose of RPM.
The only possibly novel thing is checking the website automatically, which probably has prior art. I can't remember when I first saw something automatically check the web for updates, but I doubt Microsoft invented it. The patent abstract sounds like it's describing Windows Update.
--Kevin
The current options for obtaining music you want are either:
1) Pay $16/CD
2) Pirate it using Napster
There are other options, but these are the main ones. Most people would prefer to see artists get their due from the music, but paying $16 for 12 songs isn't always worth it. And paying $1/song from emusic.com doesn't make sense because for most people, MP3s are not as convenient as CDs, and don't have quite the sound quality. Indeed, I bought S&M on CD the day it was released because I want to be able to play it in the stereo, and on my discman, and in the car, etc. I could have downloaded it the next day, but that inconvenient. In contrast, when someone recommends something that I don't really know I would like, or something that I wouldn't listen to much, I might download it with Napster. But I would probably also pay a dime or a quarter to download it from a legitimate source. And the cost to the record label & artist is much lower for online distribution (no CD to manufacture). So, given this use of MP3s as low cost sample, would you support making your music available online (possibly in a low quality format like 128kbps) for a price significantly lower buying the equivalent CD?
Even if we have near light speed vehicles, radio waves are still faster. Barring communication via quantum entanglement (which seems fairly unlikely), the speed of light will likely be the limiting factor in social homogeneity once we start spreading out. This isn't entirely a bad thing, though. We're already too homogenized now, in my opinion.
You fail to address the key point:
Is "freedom" placing restrictions on how your code is to be used, or is "freedom" placing no restrictions on how your code can be used?
To me, it's quite clear that the GPL is the most restrictive non-commercial open source license. It may be necessary to encourage software development, at least in some cases, but it no more expands freedom than does putting up "No Trespassing" signs. Obviously, freedom includes the right to put up "No Trespassing" signs, but the signs themselves are a reduction in freedom, not an increase. I'm all for letting people keep others off their property, but not because it's morally "good".
In short, I don't dislike the GPL, but I think it is misleading to say the GPL is about freedom.
Also, your phrase "boycotting non-free software" really gives it away. If it is truly in everyone's best interest, then the boycott is unnecessary. Boycotts are used when there is a product you would buy but you have idealogical or moral objections to some aspect of how it is produced. E.g. No Grapes; Boycott Starbucks until they supply "fair trade" coffee. I don't necessarily object to boycotts either -- I'll never buy anything from Walmart, because I don't like their politics. I don't not buy from Walmart because it's in my best interests to shop elsewhere.
--Kevin
This has been mentioned, but I'd like to take a crack at an explaination that might make sense to people who still don't get it.
You've seen chess problems, where you're given a board set up, and it says, "white to play and win in one". Which means, white can checkmate on the next move. When you see "white to play and win in two", it means that you make your first move so that whatever move black makes, you can checkmate them the move after that.
To Solve chess means to find the solution to one of the following problems:
1. From the initial board set up (all pieces in their original positions), find the answer to "white to play and win in n", where n is maybe 50.
2. From the initial board setup, find the answer to "white to play and draw in n".
3. From any of the 12 possible positions after white has made its first move, solve "black to play and win in n". Repeat this for the 11 other positions.
4. From any of the 12 possible positions, solve "black to play and win in n".
Since chess is a game of complete information, it's likely that there is a solution to one of these four problems. There might be more than one. There can be a solution to both 4 and 2, but there cannot be a solution to any other combination of these -- they are mutually exclusive.
If I remember my game theory correctly, any game of complete information is solvable, so one of these is the solution. No one knows which it is (although 1 and 2/4 seem more likely than 3, just intuitively.)
Funny that this was posted today. I'm working on a project for my CS class to write a program to play a simple contrived game well. We still aren't able to search the whole game tree, even for a simple game. I suspect a high end PC with a lot of RAM and hard disk space could solve it, but we don't have the time.
--Kevin
My studies have found that nearly 100% of people who have spent time in state prison are criminals. We need to stop putting people in jail, because it causes crime.
--Kevin
If you think it's the type of program that people might go out and buy a book for, include a manual.
It doesn't have to be a 600-page "everything the developers ever envisioned for this piece of software, and how to use it, in excruciating detail", but it should at least allow someone to learn the program without refering to online help, and enough to tell them how to use the most common features.
If people didn't want printed manuals, how would SCC stay in business? (Are they still in business? maybe bad example.) People buy printouts of stuff they can get online for free. Clearly, they like paper.
--Kevin