Seems to me the relevant "social problem" here is that people don't switch their damn computers off. How much power is sucked up globally by office computers left on overnight? How much CO2 is produced showing screensavers to empty offices? Here's an idea for real humanitarian computing: instead of finding uses for "wasted" clock cycles, get your company to switch off its computers and send the money it saves on electricity to a cancer research charity. Grumble grumble grumble...
Same comment in haiku form for those with short attention spans:
Does your computer
Need to be left on all night?
Pull the f*cking plug
The drug war in Colombia, at least to Colombians, is more focused around the guerilla groups and narco-trafickers mutual supporting each other... The "drug war" in colombia is breaking this cycle and getting rid of one of these two groups which will also play a large role in breaking the other.
On the contrary, the drug war is increasing the value of coca, making it a valuable source of revenue for the insurgents. Why aren't the FARC involved in maize farming?
It isn't necessary to manufacture data - CNN probably has a choice of several models to run the raw data through. Before the final counts are in, they try to pick the model that will most closely predict the result. After they find out the result, they might pick a different model that makes the data match the actual outcome. This isn't fraudulent, but it's very bad science.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if CNN used questionable statistical methods to make themselves look like better clairvoyants than they really are, even if it had the accidental side-effect of masking fraud. (Not that I have any reason apart from my natural cynicism to believe that fraud would even be considered, let alone attempted.)
The majority of newspapers are loss-making mouthpieces for their owners. The manipulation is more subtle than on TV but it's still there, and all the more powerful for being unnoticed. The appearance of objectivity is a way of sneaking the message past the defences of an intelligent reader. The Economist goes out of its way to appear calm, rational and objective because the audience it's trying to manipulate is relatively intelligent and skeptical. But despite its measured tone, the message The Economist is delivering about globalization and market fundamentalism is far from centrist and far from controversial.
It's the same with advertising - if you speak too loudly people's defences come up. On a recent trip to the US I was struck by the intensity and volume and obviousness of a lot of the advertising and news compared with what I'd become used to in Britain. But by the end of two weeks I'd adjusted to the louder advertising environment - I'd stopped noticing it, which meant it was getting past my defences again. I think the US is a few years ahead of Europe in terms of the intensity of media bombardment that people will tolerate, which is one of the reasons that other countries perceive American news as flashy, obvious and biased.
It's interesting that outsiders also perceive American news as broadly right-wing, whereas Americans seem to percieve Fox as right-wing and CNN as left-wing. Does this mean that the subtext of American news, more audible to Europeans in their quieter media climate, is generally more right-wing than the content? And if so, does the adjustment to a louder media environment, the year-on-year reduction in sensitivity to cope with the growing intensity of news and advertising, allow broadcasters to widen the gap between text and subtext to the point where they can be saying something from one end of the political spectrum, but communicating something from the other end?
It would have been possible to impose the fee on VCRs and TV tuner cards instead. As far as I'm concerned, this would have been the best solution, but I don't have much of a say in the legislation over here.
FWIW the TV license fee in the UK already applies to VCRs and TV tuner cards.
In other words, not using the law to ensure that everyone who benefits from the commons also contributes to it, but hoping that will turn out to be the case anyway.;-)
Linux isn't anarchic - its success depends on copyright law. Without copyright law and licenses such as the GPL, corporations would be able to combine the efforts of amateur coders with the efforts of their own professional coders, without making any contribution in return. The result would be a one-way flow of effort from amateurs to corporations. The GPL ensures a two-way flow, so the commons is enriched by everyone's efforts. Using the law to ensure that everyone who benefits from the commons also contributes to it isn't anarchism, it's socialism.
So you're saying that corporate stuctures somehow ruin productivity, stifle innovation and creativity, and turn the skills you once loved into the job you dread from the first moment you wake up in the morning? It's news to me but OK, if you say so...
No, the bill requires "information that accurately identifies the name of the person who is disseminating the commercial recording or audiovisual work, along with his or her valid e-mail or mailing address."
IANAL either, but if you drive drunk to someone's house and shoot them with an illegal firearm, you can be found guilty of drunk driving, murder and owning an illegal firearm. That's why if you're going to drive drunk to someone's house and shoot them, it's always advisable to use a registered gun.
From the bill:...imprisonment for a person who is not the copyright owner to knowingly electronically disseminate a commercial recording or audiovisual work without disclosing his or her true name and address...
Wow, it doesn't include an exception for people who have the permission of the copyright owner? That puts ALL WEBSITES AND RADIO STATIONS IN CALIFORNIA in an interesting legal position.
The Freenet protocol doesn't include a way for nodes to exchange email addresses, so if it's illegal to share files without offering your email address, it's illegal to run a Freenet node.
Californian Freenetters have a choice: they can either fork the protocol, or run their nodes illegally. Freenet makes no attempt to hide the fact that you're running a node - IP addresses circulate through the network and are used to improve the efficiency of routing - so the police can run a "honeypot" node (in Nevada) and compile a list of Freenet IPs that belong to Californian ISPs. Connect to each node in turn and if it lets you download files, arrest the owner.
The RIAA knows that P2P users can be identified by their IP addresses. But it's difficult to explain to the public that they have no anonymity when using P2P software without also revealing that they have no anonymity when browsing for porn, which would upset a lot of people and make the government look like Big Brother. Much better to leave people's beliefs unchanged and instead pass a law that makes most existing P2P software illegal, splits the P2P development community into "collaborators" and "illegals", and paves the way for legislation requiring email addresses to be traceable.
Sounds to me like what he's saying violates the conservation of linear momentum. Newton wouldn't have expected a system of massive objects to settle down to a stationary state.:-/
What's needed is a hybrid between a library and a process - call it a protected library. It has its own privileges and its own data segment, like a process, but it doesn't have any threads: it exports an API and uses the caller's timeslice and stack segment, like a library.
You could, for example, have a graphics library that was setuid root, to allow non-root users to access the graphics hardware through a rectricted API.
This gives you the advantages of a shared library (no context switching, driver is distributed and managed separately from the kernel) without the disadvantages (processes must run as root because the library requires root privileges to access the hardware). There's only one disadvantage that I can think of: all arguments must be passed on the stack because the caller and the protected library have different data segments. If the protected library can be given access to the caller's data segment as well as its own, that problem disappears - the 386 supports six segments so that should be possible in principle. But passing arguments on the stack might be a better solution because it would allow arbitrary nesting of protected libraries.
Re:another senseless Slashdot story title
on
P2P Web searches
·
· Score: 1
I agree - I haven't finished reading the paper yet, but it seems like each node needs to know the percolation threshold of the network. How is that information calculated and disseminated? Or do the nodes adapt the topology locally to create a network with a known percolation threshold?
Slashdot Mirror
Now you know why I always carry an umbrella with a picture of Wen Jiabao painted on the top.
Same comment in haiku form for those with short attention spans:
Does your computer
Need to be left on all night?
Pull the f*cking plug
On the contrary, the drug war is increasing the value of coca, making it a valuable source of revenue for the insurgents. Why aren't the FARC involved in maize farming?
I tried the thame thing with the thithleth in my lawn but it theemth to be a thuboptimal tholuthion.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if CNN used questionable statistical methods to make themselves look like better clairvoyants than they really are, even if it had the accidental side-effect of masking fraud. (Not that I have any reason apart from my natural cynicism to believe that fraud would even be considered, let alone attempted.)
The full text of the article (including a PDF link) is here.
Large applications written in Java are bugs. ;-p
It's the same with advertising - if you speak too loudly people's defences come up. On a recent trip to the US I was struck by the intensity and volume and obviousness of a lot of the advertising and news compared with what I'd become used to in Britain. But by the end of two weeks I'd adjusted to the louder advertising environment - I'd stopped noticing it, which meant it was getting past my defences again. I think the US is a few years ahead of Europe in terms of the intensity of media bombardment that people will tolerate, which is one of the reasons that other countries perceive American news as flashy, obvious and biased.
It's interesting that outsiders also perceive American news as broadly right-wing, whereas Americans seem to percieve Fox as right-wing and CNN as left-wing. Does this mean that the subtext of American news, more audible to Europeans in their quieter media climate, is generally more right-wing than the content? And if so, does the adjustment to a louder media environment, the year-on-year reduction in sensitivity to cope with the growing intensity of news and advertising, allow broadcasters to widen the gap between text and subtext to the point where they can be saying something from one end of the political spectrum, but communicating something from the other end?
FWIW the TV license fee in the UK already applies to VCRs and TV tuner cards.
In other words, not using the law to ensure that everyone who benefits from the commons also contributes to it, but hoping that will turn out to be the case anyway. ;-)
I take your point though: anarchy != anarchism.
Linux isn't anarchic - its success depends on copyright law. Without copyright law and licenses such as the GPL, corporations would be able to combine the efforts of amateur coders with the efforts of their own professional coders, without making any contribution in return. The result would be a one-way flow of effort from amateurs to corporations. The GPL ensures a two-way flow, so the commons is enriched by everyone's efforts. Using the law to ensure that everyone who benefits from the commons also contributes to it isn't anarchism, it's socialism.
It works, too, but the damn things eat so many batteries it's hardly worth it.
So you're saying that corporate stuctures somehow ruin productivity, stifle innovation and creativity, and turn the skills you once loved into the job you dread from the first moment you wake up in the morning? It's news to me but OK, if you say so...
...BSD, on the other hand, is dying.
No, the bill requires "information that accurately identifies the name of the person who is disseminating the commercial recording or audiovisual work, along with his or her valid e-mail or mailing address."
IANAL either, but if you drive drunk to someone's house and shoot them with an illegal firearm, you can be found guilty of drunk driving, murder and owning an illegal firearm. That's why if you're going to drive drunk to someone's house and shoot them, it's always advisable to use a registered gun.
Which has interesting implications for websites and radio stations in California. :-) When does the law come into effect?
Wow, it doesn't include an exception for people who have the permission of the copyright owner? That puts ALL WEBSITES AND RADIO STATIONS IN CALIFORNIA in an interesting legal position.
Californian Freenetters have a choice: they can either fork the protocol, or run their nodes illegally. Freenet makes no attempt to hide the fact that you're running a node - IP addresses circulate through the network and are used to improve the efficiency of routing - so the police can run a "honeypot" node (in Nevada) and compile a list of Freenet IPs that belong to Californian ISPs. Connect to each node in turn and if it lets you download files, arrest the owner.
Freenet is far from immune.
The RIAA knows that P2P users can be identified by their IP addresses. But it's difficult to explain to the public that they have no anonymity when using P2P software without also revealing that they have no anonymity when browsing for porn, which would upset a lot of people and make the government look like Big Brother. Much better to leave people's beliefs unchanged and instead pass a law that makes most existing P2P software illegal, splits the P2P development community into "collaborators" and "illegals", and paves the way for legislation requiring email addresses to be traceable.
They probably pleaded with the Slashdot editors not to link to a dynamic page from the front page of Slashdot. Thanks for fixing that problem. ;-)
Sounds to me like what he's saying violates the conservation of linear momentum. Newton wouldn't have expected a system of massive objects to settle down to a stationary state. :-/
You could, for example, have a graphics library that was setuid root, to allow non-root users to access the graphics hardware through a rectricted API.
This gives you the advantages of a shared library (no context switching, driver is distributed and managed separately from the kernel) without the disadvantages (processes must run as root because the library requires root privileges to access the hardware). There's only one disadvantage that I can think of: all arguments must be passed on the stack because the caller and the protected library have different data segments. If the protected library can be given access to the caller's data segment as well as its own, that problem disappears - the 386 supports six segments so that should be possible in principle. But passing arguments on the stack might be a better solution because it would allow arbitrary nesting of protected libraries.
vi not?
I agree - I haven't finished reading the paper yet, but it seems like each node needs to know the percolation threshold of the network. How is that information calculated and disseminated? Or do the nodes adapt the topology locally to create a network with a known percolation threshold?