It wouldn't surprise me, but do you have any numbers to back this statement up?
Even if most e-mail addresses culled by spammers are from newsgroups, there are very likely at least SOME companies which sell e-mail addresses which they collect from their web sites - and it would probably be a good precedent if their names were splashed far and wide as privacy violators.
I like the messages I've seen about giving unique e-mail addresses when signing up for services to find out who is giving our e-mail addresses to spammers.
Would there be anyway to make automate this & make it really convenient so that we could create a online "hall of shame" database of companies who are responsible for selling our e-mail addresses?
I'm starting to get pissed at the socialist attitude on/., though... I know how much they spent on the album... on the recording alone, and the own the studio, which is a luxury not available to most artists. In the case of music, for most of the kids out there, damnit, free (as in speech) does mean free (as in beer). If they can get it without compensating the person who poured sweat and blood into into it, regardless of how much benifit they gain from it, they will!
Hmmm, maybe a possible alternative is for a cooperative "purchase" mechanism - the artist puts up a really low bitrate version of their song, people listen to it & everyone who likes it can contribute a little bit until they meet some kind of "reserve" price which the artist has such (presumably high enough to recoup their expenses, including labor), then the high-quality version of the work can be released (and will presumably be immediately distributed far & wide to adoring fans).
At earth's distance from the sun, the sun provides about 1.0e3 watts per square metre (_roughly_; I don't have the exact value).
This means that to accelerate a 100kg mini-probe at 1 cm/sec/sec (suitable for in-system movement, not launch), using the sun's light, you'd need a circular sail about half a kilometre in diameter.
Of course, part of the point of this article is that you are not depending on the sun's light - you are using some kind of artificial radiation source, such as microwaves or laser light, which can be focused ono the sail (and hopefully provide more thrust than is provided by "normal" solar radiation). I'm kind of thinking that the solar wind (charged particles, not necessarily just radiation) is still a pretty good source of "push", however.
The Jury doesn't have to answer to anyone (unless it can be shown the the jury was tampered with). This is the whole reason a jury exists...it is the FINAL Check on the system.
I wish this concept was taught to more people. When in the court, the judge (and whichever side is more conservatively interpreting the laws) hammer the jury with admonitions that they are ONLY supposed to decide whether the person violated the law or not, and are not supposed to judge the law itself. The jury rarely gets instruction from lawyers that they are also responsible to judge the law itself.
I think it's also part of the lawyer's game, that if they think they'll get a more favorable ruling through strict interpretation of the law (by technicalities, for instance), that they'll try to get a trial by judge instead of jury, since the judge is honor-bound to pay more attention to the laws than to the ethics.
The real motivation for most artists in wanting to protect their work is not to prevent their fans from listening to it, but to prevent some dumbass from burning 2000 CDs of their music and selling them for 10$ apiece.
Of course, if the music were available for downloading free, then said dumbass wouldn't be able to charge $10/CD for the music - because everyone would ignore him/her.
The biggest drawback for Sony that I can see is that a game running on the Sony emulator (in my experience anyway) isn't as good as when it runs on normal PSX hardware. I suppose that someone who had never seen a PlayStation before and tried playing Soul Blade on their Bleem emulator might think, "Boy, Playstation games aren't all that good."
Interesting - I heard that if your hardware was good enough, then the resultant emulation was actually much better than what the PlayStation hardware could give (in terms of resolution & such). I haven't tried it myself (yet), but that's what I heard.
At least as far as the recording industries are concerned, they could distribute demo/trailers of their movies @ 160x152 resolution (so you could get a taste of their stuff @ postage-stamp size, then get the "real thing" through their normal ordering process). I bet the porn sites would just LUUUUUVV this:)
Doesn't make any sense to embed next key in current msg because then next key will have to be = length of current msg, and eventually you will no longer be able to have a msg of any appreciable length. You might as well just use all the random bits in your key w/o having to transmit any new key info inside of the message.
This might be more useful to help someone log in w/o having to memorize long, obscure passwords.
The login screen can just display a sentence or two, the user types those sentences (mistakes and all), and the biometric algorithm will allow them in or not.
If you want to combine this with a normal password-type situation, then just don't display the sentences - expect the user to remember them. If you combine the entropy of the words in the sentence with the entropy of the biometric authentication, then you might have entropy for a decent password (even if you build in a little error correction for discrepancies in the biometric or typing the sentence).
Puhleez - Americans don't know how cheap their gas is.
European gas is US$4-6/gal (mostly due to taxes, I'll admit). As a side effect, their cars & cities are a helluva lot more efficient about using fuel than ours.
(I'm an American BTW, these are just my observations when I've been overseas.)
Yeah, I knew that. I also know that the skin of the planes are designed to direct & disperse the energy from lightning strikes to element which are supposed to be able to handle the charge.
But I'm also thinking that the plane isn't a perfect Faraday cage (otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear radio signals from a walkman in the plane) and that the energy of the broadband EM radiation from a lightning strike is going to far exceed the puny 2 watt output of a typical cell phone.
Even if every single passenger on the plane was talking on their cell phones all at once, would it even come close to the electrical disturbance caused by a lightning strike?
I want to know how the electronics on a plane can get affected by the output of a cell phone, and not get totally roasted by flying through a lightning storm!
I discount that statistic for the simple reason that the CDC says there were only 30,535 total suicides that year, so how could 43,240 of them have been by firearm?
I label myself idiot - I summed the entries in the suicide-by-firearm table @ http://www.suicidology.org w/o checking to see if they covered overlapping categories (which they do). Proper summation yields 30,535 number you mentioned above.
This is, of course, still ~30.5k more deaths due to firearms than you listed in your original message, a statistical modification which you conveniently dismiss as "their choice". You show a severe lack of understanding (or sympathy) on how depression can suppress critical thinking abilities & cause irrational behavior.
Not only did I not go anywhere near the NRA's web page, but I'm not even a member. (Although I certainly appreciate the central role they've taken in reducing childhood gun accidents this century, and will undoubtedly join soon.)
I certainly hope that, if there is no way to remove ALL guns from a society, then all gun-owners are thoroughly indoctrinated in safety. Unfortunately, that still doesn't remove the source of MY basic worry - as long as someone else has a gun, I have to worry about whether or not they're going to decide to shoot me (note that I don't distinguish between individuals or the "authorities" here). If they don't have a gun, then I don't have to worry about them shooting me - even if they're insane or really pissed off at me. All your statistics don't mean squat to me if you can't address that basic fear.
My favorite tactic of the anti-gun folks is that whenever they quote numbers regarding children, they include everyone under 25!
Children die when they get shot - why only include statistics for adults?
And they count everybody killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, etc. in their "total American deaths by firearms" numbers. That one's priceless, because it means that even if civilians couldn't own firearms and criminals didn't own them, the numbers would hardly change.
I don't think this was an issue with the statistics we were attempting to use (once I got my number right).
And that brings us to the bottom line; gun laws only affect people who follow laws. Criminals by definition don't follow laws.
Bullshit - if weapons were scarce, then even criminals wouldn't use them (since the criminals wouldn't have to worry about being shot, and since they would be damn expensive.) Since they aren't scarce (through the very diligent efforts of US arms manufacturers), to maintain a MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)-type balance of power, suddenly EVERYONE needs to get a gun - and I no longer feel safe.
That's why *EVERY* state that has passed "shall-issue" concealed carry laws has seen an immediate drop in violent crime, greater than the national average drop. All of them.
Ah yes, the infamous correlation==causality argument - which is, of course, a classic logical fallacy.
I doubt anything I can say is going to change your mind, and I don't think anyone is listening to us anymore, so I'm going to get back to work now.
You're kidding, right? The thing I enjoyed most about the movie was that it was a LOT shorter than the book! That made it less painful to sit through.
I only vaguely remember why I thought I had to read the whole book - I think it was the only thing available at that time, and I've never been a good navel-starer.
Your statistics sound like you pasted them from some NRA info pamphlet. I notice that you didn't include statistics of suicide-by-firearms, which by the statistics @ http://www.suicidology.org/suicide_statistics.htm, account for 43,240 deaths in 1997 alone.
I will grant that a big chunk of those people committing suicide by firearm would most likely have found another way of killing themselves if the firearm had not been available, however the fact that you did not include their deaths in your "statistics" makes your argument considerably less persuasive.
BTW, I'm hardly an activist either way - I regard widespread gun use as the result of a "prisoner's dilemma"-type situation: I think the world would be better off if NO ONE had the ability to kill each other easily, but the moment at least one entity gains that ability, then the other members of the society will have to figure out how to nullify that power, either by defense (try to get back to no one having ability to kill each other easily) or offense (mutual assured destruction), in order to prevent that 1st entity from dominating the society. Unfortunately, game theory indicates that trends will tend toward the MAD scenario - and if everyone else has a gun, I certainly don't want to be the only person w/o one.
I definitely know that I don't like BS, and your post smells of well-polished BS.
I guess, then, the question would be - for an "average" gun, how many people is it used to injure (either on purpose or accidentally) during the course of its lifetime?
Besides the *gee-whiz* factor, who really needs to be a cyborg?
Well, if the ppl who are trying to come up with ways of "growing" artificial intelligence progress as fast as the cyborgians (apologies to English majors), then it will become necessary to use cyborg technology just so we can be evolutionarily competitive with our artificial intelligence creations.
And for those people who don't adapt themselves to the new technology? Well, they probably won't be around in a couple of generations, except maybe as "pets", or as examples of "primitive" humans.
I would like to point out that adopting cyborg technology does NOT require that society become like the dark visions of the Borg, or any of the other common science fiction themes that everyone will become like machines - cold & emotionless - as long as our brain structures still provide support for emotion, then we'll still experience it.
Free software might help - for a while
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 2
You might be able to get away from the influence of software manufacturers for a while by using free software - until they've got so many patents covering so many tiny ideas, you won't be able to hit a key on your keyboard w/o violating half a dozen of them.
The software industry (including media sources) want total control of information flow - and they don't want any outs, legally OR illegally.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially if it just crashed because you accidentally dropped it in a vat of molten metal while "taking it out to clean the connectors."
It wouldn't surprise me, but do you have any numbers to back this statement up?
Even if most e-mail addresses culled by spammers are from newsgroups, there are very likely at least SOME companies which sell e-mail addresses which they collect from their web sites - and it would probably be a good precedent if their names were splashed far and wide as privacy violators.
I like the messages I've seen about giving unique e-mail addresses when signing up for services to find out who is giving our e-mail addresses to spammers.
Would there be anyway to make automate this & make it really convenient so that we could create a online "hall of shame" database of companies who are responsible for selling our e-mail addresses?
Hmmm, maybe a possible alternative is for a cooperative "purchase" mechanism - the artist puts up a really low bitrate version of their song, people listen to it & everyone who likes it can contribute a little bit until they meet some kind of "reserve" price which the artist has such (presumably high enough to recoup their expenses, including labor), then the high-quality version of the work can be released (and will presumably be immediately distributed far & wide to adoring fans).
Of course, part of the point of this article is that you are not depending on the sun's light - you are using some kind of artificial radiation source, such as microwaves or laser light, which can be focused ono the sail (and hopefully provide more thrust than is provided by "normal" solar radiation). I'm kind of thinking that the solar wind (charged particles, not necessarily just radiation) is still a pretty good source of "push", however.
I wish this concept was taught to more people. When in the court, the judge (and whichever side is more conservatively interpreting the laws) hammer the jury with admonitions that they are ONLY supposed to decide whether the person violated the law or not, and are not supposed to judge the law itself. The jury rarely gets instruction from lawyers that they are also responsible to judge the law itself.
I think it's also part of the lawyer's game, that if they think they'll get a more favorable ruling through strict interpretation of the law (by technicalities, for instance), that they'll try to get a trial by judge instead of jury, since the judge is honor-bound to pay more attention to the laws than to the ethics.
Of course, if the music were available for downloading free, then said dumbass wouldn't be able to charge $10/CD for the music - because everyone would ignore him/her.
Interesting - I heard that if your hardware was good enough, then the resultant emulation was actually much better than what the PlayStation hardware could give (in terms of resolution & such). I haven't tried it myself (yet), but that's what I heard.
At least as far as the recording industries are concerned, they could distribute demo/trailers of their movies @ 160x152 resolution (so you could get a taste of their stuff @ postage-stamp size, then get the "real thing" through their normal ordering process). I bet the porn sites would just LUUUUUVV this :)
Doesn't make any sense to embed next key in current msg because then next key will have to be = length of current msg, and eventually you will no longer be able to have a msg of any appreciable length. You might as well just use all the random bits in your key w/o having to transmit any new key info inside of the message.
They might have to make money based on service & physical products?
The obvious response to this is, that if it wasn't for the "fascist" existing copyright laws, we wouldn't need copyleft.
This might be more useful to help someone log in w/o having to memorize long, obscure passwords.
The login screen can just display a sentence or two, the user types those sentences (mistakes and all), and the biometric algorithm will allow them in or not.
If you want to combine this with a normal password-type situation, then just don't display the sentences - expect the user to remember them. If you combine the entropy of the words in the sentence with the entropy of the biometric authentication, then you might have entropy for a decent password (even if you build in a little error correction for discrepancies in the biometric or typing the sentence).
Puhleez - Americans don't know how cheap their gas is.
European gas is US$4-6/gal (mostly due to taxes, I'll admit). As a side effect, their cars & cities are a helluva lot more efficient about using fuel than ours.
(I'm an American BTW, these are just my observations when I've been overseas.)
Yeah, I knew that. I also know that the skin of the planes are designed to direct & disperse the energy from lightning strikes to element which are supposed to be able to handle the charge.
But I'm also thinking that the plane isn't a perfect Faraday cage (otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear radio signals from a walkman in the plane) and that the energy of the broadband EM radiation from a lightning strike is going to far exceed the puny 2 watt output of a typical cell phone.
Even if every single passenger on the plane was talking on their cell phones all at once, would it even come close to the electrical disturbance caused by a lightning strike?
There'll be a lot of people who will FINALLY decide to keep the lights they're not using off...
I want to know how the electronics on a plane can get affected by the output of a cell phone, and not get totally roasted by flying through a lightning storm!
I label myself idiot - I summed the entries in the suicide-by-firearm table @ http://www.suicidology.org w/o checking to see if they covered overlapping categories (which they do). Proper summation yields 30,535 number you mentioned above.
This is, of course, still ~30.5k more deaths due to firearms than you listed in your original message, a statistical modification which you conveniently dismiss as "their choice". You show a severe lack of understanding (or sympathy) on how depression can suppress critical thinking abilities & cause irrational behavior.
I certainly hope that, if there is no way to remove ALL guns from a society, then all gun-owners are thoroughly indoctrinated in safety. Unfortunately, that still doesn't remove the source of MY basic worry - as long as someone else has a gun, I have to worry about whether or not they're going to decide to shoot me (note that I don't distinguish between individuals or the "authorities" here). If they don't have a gun, then I don't have to worry about them shooting me - even if they're insane or really pissed off at me. All your statistics don't mean squat to me if you can't address that basic fear.
Children die when they get shot - why only include statistics for adults?
I don't think this was an issue with the statistics we were attempting to use (once I got my number right).
Bullshit - if weapons were scarce, then even criminals wouldn't use them (since the criminals wouldn't have to worry about being shot, and since they would be damn expensive.) Since they aren't scarce (through the very diligent efforts of US arms manufacturers), to maintain a MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)-type balance of power, suddenly EVERYONE needs to get a gun - and I no longer feel safe.
Ah yes, the infamous correlation==causality argument - which is, of course, a classic logical fallacy.
I doubt anything I can say is going to change your mind, and I don't think anyone is listening to us anymore, so I'm going to get back to work now.
You're kidding, right? The thing I enjoyed most about the movie was that it was a LOT shorter than the book! That made it less painful to sit through.
I only vaguely remember why I thought I had to read the whole book - I think it was the only thing available at that time, and I've never been a good navel-starer.
Your statistics sound like you pasted them from some NRA info pamphlet. I notice that you didn't include statistics of suicide-by-firearms, which by the statistics @ http://www.suicidology.org/suicide_statistics.htm, account for 43,240 deaths in 1997 alone.
I will grant that a big chunk of those people committing suicide by firearm would most likely have found another way of killing themselves if the firearm had not been available, however the fact that you did not include their deaths in your "statistics" makes your argument considerably less persuasive.
BTW, I'm hardly an activist either way - I regard widespread gun use as the result of a "prisoner's dilemma"-type situation: I think the world would be better off if NO ONE had the ability to kill each other easily, but the moment at least one entity gains that ability, then the other members of the society will have to figure out how to nullify that power, either by defense (try to get back to no one having ability to kill each other easily) or offense (mutual assured destruction), in order to prevent that 1st entity from dominating the society. Unfortunately, game theory indicates that trends will tend toward the MAD scenario - and if everyone else has a gun, I certainly don't want to be the only person w/o one.
I definitely know that I don't like BS, and your post smells of well-polished BS.
I thought that they captured the feeling of the book quite well, except that they crammed it into a much shorter period of time.
So, the movie is actually BETTER than the book, because the pain doesn't last as long.
The feeling would have even been closer if they had removed all the feeble attempts at humor.
Of course, they _were_ planning a sequel (since the 1st movie only covers about 3/5 of the book), so my compliment may be premature.
I guess, then, the question would be - for an "average" gun, how many people is it used to injure (either on purpose or accidentally) during the course of its lifetime?
I already have voices in my head - I don't need technological assistance.
*aside* what was that? No, I don't think they'd like that.
:)
Well, if the ppl who are trying to come up with ways of "growing" artificial intelligence progress as fast as the cyborgians (apologies to English majors), then it will become necessary to use cyborg technology just so we can be evolutionarily competitive with our artificial intelligence creations.
And for those people who don't adapt themselves to the new technology? Well, they probably won't be around in a couple of generations, except maybe as "pets", or as examples of "primitive" humans.
I would like to point out that adopting cyborg technology does NOT require that society become like the dark visions of the Borg, or any of the other common science fiction themes that everyone will become like machines - cold & emotionless - as long as our brain structures still provide support for emotion, then we'll still experience it.
You might be able to get away from the influence of software manufacturers for a while by using free software - until they've got so many patents covering so many tiny ideas, you won't be able to hit a key on your keyboard w/o violating half a dozen of them.
The software industry (including media sources) want total control of information flow - and they don't want any outs, legally OR illegally.