I'm not anti-FOSS in any way, I'm just wondering why it would be exempted...
Because the user has the same access to source and thus the same opportunity to find and/or fix bugs before they use the software. With closed source software they are at the mercy of the vendor with regards to bugs. The contract says there are bugs so if you need the software to be bug free you need to take on the fiscal burden to make it so.
Let me add that the main stream media has been a major contributor to the mis-held beliefs of the general public with regards to "intellectually property" laws. They blind reprint the press releases from those companies that have an interest in "intellectually property" laws whose sole purpose is to extend their obsolete business models. Unfortunately the MSM companies are the primary ones with the obsolete business models trying to get these bogus laws passed. They make no effort to refute the blatantly obvious lies and misinformation in such press releases and refuse to print studies and statistics that are counter to the lies.
Really? You can't see that it is objectively wrong and evil to lock someone in a cage for TEN YEARS for copyright infringement?
First, let me say that I definitely agree that copyright laws have gone beyond ridiculous in both the level of restrictions and punishment for violation. I would even say they gotten to the point that they are counter to the constitutional purpose for them in the first place and are thus in violation of the constitution (in the US where this takes place).
That being said, there are defensible arguments that they are justified. The primary basis for those are that large amounts of money (billions are claimed) are being lost through copyright infringement and that those moneys are being "stolen" from the "owners of the IP" (the moral justification). So if you believe those arguments then yes, 10 years in jail for contributing to the theft of billions from poor starving artist is morally justified.
Now you and I know that those arguments are based on fallacies and made up statistics. The problem is the vast majority of people don't know that. Just ask a few. And that includes the congress critters that created the laws. But most people would tend towards the government not passing laws that are ridiculously overreaching. So please admit that there is room for someone without our level of knowledge of these issues to believe that these laws are both morally and legally justified.
This doesn't exempt them from responsibility for unjust actions, though, anymore than the fact that they were the ones on the ground would exempt those who passed the laws.
Ummm...There's a slight difference in determining the moral wrongness in trying to slaughter an entire race of people just because you don't like them and bypassing the encryption on an electronic device. I think one can, with a fair amount of confidence, say that it is morally wrong to try and slaughter an entire race of people and have the vast majority of people agree with that statement. You're on slightly more ambiguous ground it declaring certain provisions of DMCA a morally bankrupt. And those carrying out the orders are much less likely to know enough to judge whether the DMCA is morally bankrupt.
It does seem like it was a standard settlement boilerplate,
This wasn't a settlement. It was a refund for a product that didn't just fail but failed spectacularly. Strangely I can't recall a single time that I received a refund for a product that failed (or for any other reason for that mater) that I had to sign a settlement agreement. But of course since it's Apple doing it it's normal and expectable to attach legal settlement type conditions to a refund.
Personally, I only buy CDs for myself and rip those to.ogg for my computer and iRiver MP3 player.
You do realize that according to the RIAA/MPAA members that this illegal copying and they're paying off as many politicians as possible to alter the law so that it's actually true.
I don't dislike Microsoft because of their business practices; I dislike Microsoft because I don't like the way they design most of their products.
And Apple designs their products such that they are owned and controlled completely by Apple even after you've bought them from Apple. You consider that a good design? I consider that just like Microsoft. Apple's may be a bit easier to use but they suffer from the same primary flaw. You have no control over them.
The only reason I can see for buying an Apple product is that they have excellent marketing. They do a fantastic job of luring in the mindless masses who don't have the wherewithal to actually think through the consequences of their purchases. When I buy something I want to control it.
I just want a country with laws that treats my beliefs with respect and dignity and not have to worry about people who label would me as a "Bible-Thumping idiot" attempting to take that right away from me.
I want a country that doesn't treat your beliefs in any way, period, much less with respect and dignity. What makes you think your beliefs deserve respect and dignity? You think all religions should be treated with respect and dignity? Does that includes ones that advocate killing others that don't believe? Religious belief should be irrelevant with regards to the law not treated in some special manner.
I have a suspicion that second life simulation may turn into a "tick the box" test. Just get it done. You know the rules and they don't really relate to reality.
Then you need better people running the simulations. When I was in the service I knew the guy who basically ran the game simulations for 5 Corps in Europe. They were running a Corp level miniature simulation with people from 7th Corps playing the OpFor. My friend, who was running the sim noticed the NATO commanders were all keeping their air defense units way too far back from contact. About 20 minutes later a Regiment of Hinds (Soviet attack helicopters) came rolling over a hill and took out about 80% of a NATO Battalion and about 50% of a Regiment ripping a huge gap in the NATO line. It was rather entertaining seeing a bunch of senior officers whining like little kids about how unfair it was. But it taught them hording their air defense units back where they were safe from ground casualties basically eliminated them from operational effectiveness.
That's what simulations are good for and how they should be run. In the evacuation sims they should lock the exit you're suppose to use. In the SL sims they can throw all kinds of wrenches in the works to keep them both interesting and engaging. There is no set script. Play off the reactions and actions. Pilots in the simulator don't just takeoff turn on the auto-pilot then land. The plane breaks in unexpected ways and things fail mysteriously. The plane starts reacting weird. They encounter weather. The whole point is to experience the unusual conditions to test peoples reactions to them under conditions where people don't die and you can objectively evaluate the performance after.
I would bet the ATC simulations focus on those type a scenarios. If they don't they need to put someone else in charge of training.
If you want to learn to be a doctor - go to a real medical school, interact with both real and trained patients in real life, and learn the intricacies of the art of talking to a patient, sharing your compassion with them, and working through their problems or concerns under real conditions. When a patient with depression and suicidal ideation shows up to the Emergency Department and there are 13 other patients waiting to be seen, I have to make a decision about how much time I'll spend with them. Do I talk them through their concerns? Do I let Social Work handle it? Do I call for a psychiatry consult? Doing these things in second life are easy and have few repercussions. Calling for a psych consult at 3:00 AM on a Tuesday for simple SI and depression will get my head ripped off by the poor psychiatrist who has to come in to do what I should have been able to do myself.
Your reasoning supports the premise rather than opposing it. This type of simulation allows you to encounter 1000's of such situations cheaply and quickly under conditions where no one is going to die when you screw the pooch completely. It allows for you and others to go back and much more objectively evaluate your performance without the emotion of knowing that your wrong actions just killed someone. It allows you to store in your brain a much greater range of scenarios and situations. No one is saying eliminate face-to-face training with real-life patients. Simulation allows you to be better prepared and to augment such training. It allows for much greater scope of training since face-to-face training with real-life patients is both much more expensive and much more risky. Would it be better for you to perform open heart surgery the first time on a simulator or actually slicing up a (hopefully) live patients heart? Wouldn't it be much better on a simulator where you can encounter a broad range of complications and critical situations where the patients life isn't at risk?
You are thinking like an organic mechanic. Very few doctors do a large amount of resuscitating and defibrillating patients. They need practice in interviewing skills to get diagnoses, which SL can give them. Getting a good patient history, and correctly interpreting it, means the difference between successfully treating the patient and not.
I wish I had mod points. And in dealing with having to make life or death decisions with incomplete or possible even incorrect information. This type of training is far more critical to patient survival that how to do CPR or where to place the defibrillator paddles.
Personally, I have never been a fan of simulation.
You've obviously never been in the military or been trained to deal with stressful, life or death situations. Or at least I hope you haven't. If you have, you need to change professions immediately. Simulations are absolutely critical to such training and the more realistic the better. Simulations can recreate and/or demonstrate the confusion and chaos that reigns in situations like that and helps tremendously in dealing with it when those situations occur for real. Actually simulations and role playing is very helpful in even mundane situations like important business meetings.
As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.
It has nothing to do with child porn. These list are NOT used to block child porn. They are used to block whatever the government or those in charge of the list finds objectionable.
If it was about child porn the objective would be to catch and punish those who are actually producing and publishing the material. They are committing crimes and hurting people. Blocking has no effect on the production and distribution of child porn. Filters and blocks are trivial to circumvent. It's probable easier to circumvent the filters that it is to actually find child porn on the interent. If it's not it should be relatively easy for the government authorities to shut down the sites and prosecute the guilty rather than introducing censorship that, by all rights, will have a terrifying chilling effect on free speech and freedom of the press. One of the articles included in the summary states that legally objectionable material in NZ includes:
All 'objectionable' material is banned. In deciding whether a publication is 'objectionable', or should instead be given an 'unrestricted' or 'restricted' classification, consideration is given to the extent, degree and manner in which the publication describes, depicts, or deals with:
â acts of torture, the infliction of serious physical harm or acts of significant cruelty
â degrades or dehumanises or demeans any person
â promotes or encourages criminal acts or acts of terrorism
â represents that members of any particular class of the public are inherently inferior to other members of the public by reason of any characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.
So this includes that video of the police beating that man who was rude to them. It includes the riot police attacking the crowd of peaceful protesters. It includes the police opening fire on the protesters who turn violent after being beaten. And don't say that won't happen. Finland's list already contains anti-censorship web sites.
I find it strange and ironic that governments are in an uproar about the censorship in Iran and some are actually considering punishing the companies that sold equipment and software used for censorship while at the same time out of the other side of their mouths they are advocating establishing the same type of censorship here (where ever here is: US, Australia, Europe, Canada). It's about child porn my ass.
Yes I have to admit the fact in the summary that ~94% of ISPs are willing to implement this struck me as being really bizarre.
...snip...
I wonder why NZ ISPs are so different in their opinion (at least as reported by this article)
It appears to be 2 ISPs that represent 94% of the NZ market. FTFA:
Here, the ISPs that took part in the trial, and the ones that have indicated interest in picking up the filtering scheme (Telecom and Vodaphone) represent 94% of the New Zealand market.
Why would I or Amazon have to pay taxes twice or more for something?
Do you know how much tubes take to maintain? The Internet is the information tubes, so the taxes go to pay for travel on it. When you drive to Amazon, you're putting wear on the tubes of the state Amazon is based in, and then Amazon has to drive your order to the affiliate, which puts wear on the superhighways to the affiliate's state. That's a lot of virtual wear!
There, fixed that for ya. You seem to be a bit behind the times. Senator Stevens was recently kind enough to reveal that the internet wasn't really a superhighway but was in reality a series of tubes. Tubes need lots of expensive maintenance. The London tube system cost billions to maintain. It's only fair Amazon should pay their fair share.
Tennessee's laws state that in prosecuting the offense of sexual exploitation of a minor, "the state is not required to prove the actual identity or age of the minor."
That's just insane. It's a crime to do anything sexual with anyone that someone may possible interpret to be under age. That's just insane.
I could take a picture of a 30 year old but they can prosecute me without having to prove how old she was. That's just insane.
How many of you zealots have actually used the W7 release candidate?
You know, I haven't seen one post, or for that mater any articles in the press, touting all these new better features that I'm supposed to be paying $120 dollars for. As far as I can see, the marketing for it has been it fixes all the screwups in Vista. Strangely, every new version of Ubuntu, which is on a fixed 6 month release schedule, compared to Microsoft's maybe every couple years (if you include service packs that add significant features like Microsoft's genuine advantage), includes a list of new and improved features. Some are rather esoteric and somewhat arcane to the average user but they are there none the less. What compelling new features does Windows 7 have that should compel someone to shell out $120 dollars for it?
But, I know, I know, we zealots shouldn't actually be looking for value in spending our hard earned money. We should just be giving our money to Billy Boy simple because he's deemed to give us another of his infinity superior products.
Re:Electronic Health Records is very hard
on
IT and Health Care
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Strange things can really happen with computers, as stray neutrino can strike a transistor and change it's state and either cause a system to crash or the wrong prescription to be issued.
It's idiotic statements like that which make the non-experts in the technology field shy away from technology. The odds of a human error is many orders of magnitude greater than the odds of a stray neutrino causing a wrong Rx.
This is a good thing -- of course, there is perhaps some imaginary situation where it would be better to destroy the aircraft to ameliorate some aspect of an impending crash, however, the vast majority (all ever recorded in an actual crash?) of inputs that can destroy aircraft are not intentional nor required.
Under normal conditions it's a good thing. The problem is the computer control system is basing it's evaluation of the situation on the limited sensors. If it gets bad data from one or more of those sensors it's going to base it's control on that bad data. Not only that but an unusual data set can bring out bugs in software that are only manifested with that unanticipated data set. No imaginary situation required. In this case there is a strong suspicion of airspeed indicator problems. Airspeed is a critical aspect when flying in the conditions that plane was flying into. Add to that unusual inputs from other sensors due to the extreme conditions (100mph updrafts) it was flying through and you have data inputs that were likely unanticipated by whoever wrote the control software. A human pilot has the ability to disregard bad inputs and react based on the his much greater number of inputs including their past experiences.
The role of conflicting pilot input is also well thought out (described in the link), and the airbus designers were aware of these (pseudo)philosophical objections to excessive computer control. I do not think there is much of a conflict among people familiar with the operation and implementation.
Apparently not as well thought out as they thought since it appears at least 2 planes are likely to have crashed because of it. In theory practice is as good as theory. In practice it's not. No matter how thought out something is believed to be it's pretty much guaranteed something wasn't thought of.
American pilot with The Right Stuff in an American plane would have saved everyone; dangerous European plane and computer killed hundreds. Oversimplified sniping, or childish fantasy?
Talk about misleading. Did you even read the summary? So you think only American's can be battle-tested? Cause that's what it said. "Battle-tested pilot" not American. The summary was talking about the design philosophy of 2 companies and how those philosophies may be influenced by cultural differences.
The problem with not allowing the human to take over is that the inputs to a computer are limited to a relatively few sensors. When those sensors feed incorrect information the computer is ALWAYS going to do the wrong thing (airspeed sensor discrepancies in this case). A human has a great many more inputs and is much more likely to doubt specific aircraft sensors if they don't match the other inputs including his experience. Now normally I would go with the "trust the computer" crowd. For instance in driving it would be much safer with computer controls that took over when sensors inputs to a computer evaluated a dangerous situation was developing. But there is a big difference between the people in control when flying and driving. Driving is pretty much unregulated. Anyone can get a license with little or no training and can drive pretty much however they like with relatively few consequences. Pilots (especially commercial pilots) are trained very thoroughly and must get a great deal of experience with veteran pilots before becoming a plane captain. By no means are they going to be perfect but by definition a crisis in an aircraft is going to involve unusual circumstances that were very likely not anticipated by whoever wrote the control software so neither is the control software. I think I would trust the human to adapt in those situations rather than the computer.
Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big [wikimedia.org] gas guzzlers [wikimedia.org] -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.
From an economic viewpoint I agree with you. But that has nothing to do with the environment and getting rid of them won't help the environment. So you think hybrids are the answer? Do you know the environmental problems involved in having every car in existence have batteries? Batteries are full of toxic nasty things some of which rare to the point that there is just not enough of them. Imagine battery disposal issues in places like China or Mexico where rules aren't very well enforced. The solutions aren't as simple as the environmentalist make them out to be. What will fix the environment is a healthy world economy that allows for rapid advancing technology not forced radical changes that would hamper those.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not anti-FOSS in any way, I'm just wondering why it would be exempted...
Because the user has the same access to source and thus the same opportunity to find and/or fix bugs before they use the software. With closed source software they are at the mercy of the vendor with regards to bugs. The contract says there are bugs so if you need the software to be bug free you need to take on the fiscal burden to make it so.
Replying to my own post
Let me add that the main stream media has been a major contributor to the mis-held beliefs of the general public with regards to "intellectually property" laws. They blind reprint the press releases from those companies that have an interest in "intellectually property" laws whose sole purpose is to extend their obsolete business models. Unfortunately the MSM companies are the primary ones with the obsolete business models trying to get these bogus laws passed. They make no effort to refute the blatantly obvious lies and misinformation in such press releases and refuse to print studies and statistics that are counter to the lies.
Really? You can't see that it is objectively wrong and evil to lock someone in a cage for TEN YEARS for copyright infringement?
First, let me say that I definitely agree that copyright laws have gone beyond ridiculous in both the level of restrictions and punishment for violation. I would even say they gotten to the point that they are counter to the constitutional purpose for them in the first place and are thus in violation of the constitution (in the US where this takes place).
That being said, there are defensible arguments that they are justified. The primary basis for those are that large amounts of money (billions are claimed) are being lost through copyright infringement and that those moneys are being "stolen" from the "owners of the IP" (the moral justification). So if you believe those arguments then yes, 10 years in jail for contributing to the theft of billions from poor starving artist is morally justified.
Now you and I know that those arguments are based on fallacies and made up statistics. The problem is the vast majority of people don't know that. Just ask a few. And that includes the congress critters that created the laws. But most people would tend towards the government not passing laws that are ridiculously overreaching. So please admit that there is room for someone without our level of knowledge of these issues to believe that these laws are both morally and legally justified.
This doesn't exempt them from responsibility for unjust actions, though, anymore than the fact that they were the ones on the ground would exempt those who passed the laws.
Ummm...There's a slight difference in determining the moral wrongness in trying to slaughter an entire race of people just because you don't like them and bypassing the encryption on an electronic device. I think one can, with a fair amount of confidence, say that it is morally wrong to try and slaughter an entire race of people and have the vast majority of people agree with that statement. You're on slightly more ambiguous ground it declaring certain provisions of DMCA a morally bankrupt. And those carrying out the orders are much less likely to know enough to judge whether the DMCA is morally bankrupt.
It does seem like it was a standard settlement boilerplate,
This wasn't a settlement. It was a refund for a product that didn't just fail but failed spectacularly. Strangely I can't recall a single time that I received a refund for a product that failed (or for any other reason for that mater) that I had to sign a settlement agreement. But of course since it's Apple doing it it's normal and expectable to attach legal settlement type conditions to a refund.
Personally, I only buy CDs for myself and rip those to .ogg for my computer and iRiver MP3 player.
You do realize that according to the RIAA/MPAA members that this illegal copying and they're paying off as many politicians as possible to alter the law so that it's actually true.
I don't dislike Microsoft because of their business practices; I dislike Microsoft because I don't like the way they design most of their products.
And Apple designs their products such that they are owned and controlled completely by Apple even after you've bought them from Apple. You consider that a good design? I consider that just like Microsoft. Apple's may be a bit easier to use but they suffer from the same primary flaw. You have no control over them.
The only reason I can see for buying an Apple product is that they have excellent marketing. They do a fantastic job of luring in the mindless masses who don't have the wherewithal to actually think through the consequences of their purchases. When I buy something I want to control it.
It can drive my flying car.
I just want a country with laws that treats my beliefs with respect and dignity and not have to worry about people who label would me as a "Bible-Thumping idiot" attempting to take that right away from me.
I want a country that doesn't treat your beliefs in any way, period, much less with respect and dignity. What makes you think your beliefs deserve respect and dignity? You think all religions should be treated with respect and dignity? Does that includes ones that advocate killing others that don't believe? Religious belief should be irrelevant with regards to the law not treated in some special manner.
I have a suspicion that second life simulation may turn into a "tick the box" test. Just get it done. You know the rules and they don't really relate to reality.
Then you need better people running the simulations. When I was in the service I knew the guy who basically ran the game simulations for 5 Corps in Europe. They were running a Corp level miniature simulation with people from 7th Corps playing the OpFor. My friend, who was running the sim noticed the NATO commanders were all keeping their air defense units way too far back from contact. About 20 minutes later a Regiment of Hinds (Soviet attack helicopters) came rolling over a hill and took out about 80% of a NATO Battalion and about 50% of a Regiment ripping a huge gap in the NATO line. It was rather entertaining seeing a bunch of senior officers whining like little kids about how unfair it was. But it taught them hording their air defense units back where they were safe from ground casualties basically eliminated them from operational effectiveness.
That's what simulations are good for and how they should be run. In the evacuation sims they should lock the exit you're suppose to use. In the SL sims they can throw all kinds of wrenches in the works to keep them both interesting and engaging. There is no set script. Play off the reactions and actions. Pilots in the simulator don't just takeoff turn on the auto-pilot then land. The plane breaks in unexpected ways and things fail mysteriously. The plane starts reacting weird. They encounter weather. The whole point is to experience the unusual conditions to test peoples reactions to them under conditions where people don't die and you can objectively evaluate the performance after.
I would bet the ATC simulations focus on those type a scenarios. If they don't they need to put someone else in charge of training.
If you want to learn to be a doctor - go to a real medical school, interact with both real and trained patients in real life, and learn the intricacies of the art of talking to a patient, sharing your compassion with them, and working through their problems or concerns under real conditions. When a patient with depression and suicidal ideation shows up to the Emergency Department and there are 13 other patients waiting to be seen, I have to make a decision about how much time I'll spend with them. Do I talk them through their concerns? Do I let Social Work handle it? Do I call for a psychiatry consult? Doing these things in second life are easy and have few repercussions. Calling for a psych consult at 3:00 AM on a Tuesday for simple SI and depression will get my head ripped off by the poor psychiatrist who has to come in to do what I should have been able to do myself.
Your reasoning supports the premise rather than opposing it. This type of simulation allows you to encounter 1000's of such situations cheaply and quickly under conditions where no one is going to die when you screw the pooch completely. It allows for you and others to go back and much more objectively evaluate your performance without the emotion of knowing that your wrong actions just killed someone. It allows you to store in your brain a much greater range of scenarios and situations. No one is saying eliminate face-to-face training with real-life patients. Simulation allows you to be better prepared and to augment such training. It allows for much greater scope of training since face-to-face training with real-life patients is both much more expensive and much more risky. Would it be better for you to perform open heart surgery the first time on a simulator or actually slicing up a (hopefully) live patients heart? Wouldn't it be much better on a simulator where you can encounter a broad range of complications and critical situations where the patients life isn't at risk?
You are thinking like an organic mechanic. Very few doctors do a large amount of resuscitating and defibrillating patients. They need practice in interviewing skills to get diagnoses, which SL can give them. Getting a good patient history, and correctly interpreting it, means the difference between successfully treating the patient and not.
I wish I had mod points. And in dealing with having to make life or death decisions with incomplete or possible even incorrect information. This type of training is far more critical to patient survival that how to do CPR or where to place the defibrillator paddles.
Personally, I have never been a fan of simulation.
You've obviously never been in the military or been trained to deal with stressful, life or death situations. Or at least I hope you haven't. If you have, you need to change professions immediately. Simulations are absolutely critical to such training and the more realistic the better. Simulations can recreate and/or demonstrate the confusion and chaos that reigns in situations like that and helps tremendously in dealing with it when those situations occur for real. Actually simulations and role playing is very helpful in even mundane situations like important business meetings.
Does it? Does the T91 take a completely different approach to computing? Really? What is this marketing fluff?
No. It probable means they patented it. The lawsuits start in 3...2...
As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.
It has nothing to do with child porn. These list are NOT used to block child porn. They are used to block whatever the government or those in charge of the list finds objectionable.
If it was about child porn the objective would be to catch and punish those who are actually producing and publishing the material. They are committing crimes and hurting people. Blocking has no effect on the production and distribution of child porn. Filters and blocks are trivial to circumvent. It's probable easier to circumvent the filters that it is to actually find child porn on the interent. If it's not it should be relatively easy for the government authorities to shut down the sites and prosecute the guilty rather than introducing censorship that, by all rights, will have a terrifying chilling effect on free speech and freedom of the press. One of the articles included in the summary states that legally objectionable material in NZ includes:
All 'objectionable' material is banned. In deciding whether a publication is 'objectionable', or should instead be given an 'unrestricted' or 'restricted' classification, consideration is given to the extent, degree and manner in which the publication describes, depicts, or deals with:
â acts of torture, the infliction of serious physical harm or acts of significant cruelty
â degrades or dehumanises or demeans any person
â promotes or encourages criminal acts or acts of terrorism
â represents that members of any particular class of the public are inherently inferior to other members of the public by reason of any characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.
So this includes that video of the police beating that man who was rude to them. It includes the riot police attacking the crowd of peaceful protesters. It includes the police opening fire on the protesters who turn violent after being beaten. And don't say that won't happen. Finland's list already contains anti-censorship web sites.
I find it strange and ironic that governments are in an uproar about the censorship in Iran and some are actually considering punishing the companies that sold equipment and software used for censorship while at the same time out of the other side of their mouths they are advocating establishing the same type of censorship here (where ever here is: US, Australia, Europe, Canada). It's about child porn my ass.
Yes I have to admit the fact in the summary that ~94% of ISPs are willing to implement this struck me as being really bizarre.
...snip...
I wonder why NZ ISPs are so different in their opinion (at least as reported by this article)
It appears to be 2 ISPs that represent 94% of the NZ market. FTFA:
Here, the ISPs that took part in the trial, and the ones that have indicated interest in picking up the filtering scheme (Telecom and Vodaphone) represent 94% of the New Zealand market.
Do you know how much tubes take to maintain? The Internet is the information tubes, so the taxes go to pay for travel on it. When you drive to Amazon, you're putting wear on the tubes of the state Amazon is based in, and then Amazon has to drive your order to the affiliate, which puts wear on the superhighways to the affiliate's state. That's a lot of virtual wear!
There, fixed that for ya. You seem to be a bit behind the times. Senator Stevens was recently kind enough to reveal that the internet wasn't really a superhighway but was in reality a series of tubes. Tubes need lots of expensive maintenance. The London tube system cost billions to maintain. It's only fair Amazon should pay their fair share.
Tennessee's laws state that in prosecuting the offense of sexual exploitation of a minor, "the state is not required to prove the actual identity or age of the minor."
That's just insane. It's a crime to do anything sexual with anyone that someone may possible interpret to be under age. That's just insane.
I could take a picture of a 30 year old but they can prosecute me without having to prove how old she was. That's just insane.
This pretty much outlaws sex.
How many of you zealots have actually used the W7 release candidate?
You know, I haven't seen one post, or for that mater any articles in the press, touting all these new better features that I'm supposed to be paying $120 dollars for. As far as I can see, the marketing for it has been it fixes all the screwups in Vista. Strangely, every new version of Ubuntu, which is on a fixed 6 month release schedule, compared to Microsoft's maybe every couple years (if you include service packs that add significant features like Microsoft's genuine advantage), includes a list of new and improved features. Some are rather esoteric and somewhat arcane to the average user but they are there none the less. What compelling new features does Windows 7 have that should compel someone to shell out $120 dollars for it?
But, I know, I know, we zealots shouldn't actually be looking for value in spending our hard earned money. We should just be giving our money to Billy Boy simple because he's deemed to give us another of his infinity superior products.
Strange things can really happen with computers, as stray neutrino can strike a transistor and change it's state and either cause a system to crash or the wrong prescription to be issued.
It's idiotic statements like that which make the non-experts in the technology field shy away from technology. The odds of a human error is many orders of magnitude greater than the odds of a stray neutrino causing a wrong Rx.
Here?
Except Redwings Hockey isn't a sport, it's a religon. And they'll bring home the Cup on Friday night.
Yeah, devil worship.
This is a good thing -- of course, there is perhaps some imaginary situation where it would be better to destroy the aircraft to ameliorate some aspect of an impending crash, however, the vast majority (all ever recorded in an actual crash?) of inputs that can destroy aircraft are not intentional nor required.
Under normal conditions it's a good thing. The problem is the computer control system is basing it's evaluation of the situation on the limited sensors. If it gets bad data from one or more of those sensors it's going to base it's control on that bad data. Not only that but an unusual data set can bring out bugs in software that are only manifested with that unanticipated data set. No imaginary situation required. In this case there is a strong suspicion of airspeed indicator problems. Airspeed is a critical aspect when flying in the conditions that plane was flying into. Add to that unusual inputs from other sensors due to the extreme conditions (100mph updrafts) it was flying through and you have data inputs that were likely unanticipated by whoever wrote the control software. A human pilot has the ability to disregard bad inputs and react based on the his much greater number of inputs including their past experiences.
The role of conflicting pilot input is also well thought out (described in the link), and the airbus designers were aware of these (pseudo)philosophical objections to excessive computer control. I do not think there is much of a conflict among people familiar with the operation and implementation.
Apparently not as well thought out as they thought since it appears at least 2 planes are likely to have crashed because of it. In theory practice is as good as theory. In practice it's not. No matter how thought out something is believed to be it's pretty much guaranteed something wasn't thought of.
American pilot with The Right Stuff in an American plane would have saved everyone; dangerous European plane and computer killed hundreds. Oversimplified sniping, or childish fantasy?
Talk about misleading. Did you even read the summary? So you think only American's can be battle-tested? Cause that's what it said. "Battle-tested pilot" not American. The summary was talking about the design philosophy of 2 companies and how those philosophies may be influenced by cultural differences.
The problem with not allowing the human to take over is that the inputs to a computer are limited to a relatively few sensors. When those sensors feed incorrect information the computer is ALWAYS going to do the wrong thing (airspeed sensor discrepancies in this case). A human has a great many more inputs and is much more likely to doubt specific aircraft sensors if they don't match the other inputs including his experience. Now normally I would go with the "trust the computer" crowd. For instance in driving it would be much safer with computer controls that took over when sensors inputs to a computer evaluated a dangerous situation was developing. But there is a big difference between the people in control when flying and driving. Driving is pretty much unregulated. Anyone can get a license with little or no training and can drive pretty much however they like with relatively few consequences. Pilots (especially commercial pilots) are trained very thoroughly and must get a great deal of experience with veteran pilots before becoming a plane captain. By no means are they going to be perfect but by definition a crisis in an aircraft is going to involve unusual circumstances that were very likely not anticipated by whoever wrote the control software so neither is the control software. I think I would trust the human to adapt in those situations rather than the computer.
.
Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big [wikimedia.org] gas guzzlers [wikimedia.org] -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.
From an economic viewpoint I agree with you. But that has nothing to do with the environment and getting rid of them won't help the environment. So you think hybrids are the answer? Do you know the environmental problems involved in having every car in existence have batteries? Batteries are full of toxic nasty things some of which rare to the point that there is just not enough of them. Imagine battery disposal issues in places like China or Mexico where rules aren't very well enforced. The solutions aren't as simple as the environmentalist make them out to be. What will fix the environment is a healthy world economy that allows for rapid advancing technology not forced radical changes that would hamper those.