Microsoft wanted to add a file system with SQL access. They wanted to add that to Windows 2000, then XP, the Vista. And they announced a lot of other features which are normally not added to the final product or they do not fulfill any of the promises they made.
You are right. The best thing to do is to change things in your environment. This includes telling people why certain laws, decissions, etc. are bad. If enough people think in da specific way, politicans come around, because they want to be elected.
I talked about this DNS blocking attempt with my sister, who is a part time politician in the city council. Before I talked to her, she was not really sure that the DNS block list is a bad thing. However, after the talk she is now against it. So sometimes it is really that the people do not know the facts and the implications. And it is our task to tell them.
If you block google, the Internet will became useless to most people. Think of all those students, who google their thesis together, they would have to do it all by themselves.
The worst thing about this is, that they want to log all blocked dns requests AND after you get on the list YOU have to prove your innocence (and still german politicians call this a constitutional state)!
That's why the law will never survive the Federal Constitutional Court. They will dismiss it.
also they want to put sites on the list, that have links to a site on the list... recursively this will lead to the whole freakin internet to be on that list within a day and EVERYONE to be subjected to child-pornography-raids! (Kristallnacht, anyone?)
First: That would render the list useless. Even if they want to use the list results in court, they have to show evidence. That means they have to publish the DNS entries in question.
Second: You don't call it Kristallnacht, because this is a Nazi term. The correct term would be Reichspogromnacht. However, to compare the distruction of jewish property to this list is way out of line.
PLUS the brainwashed mob supports the NSDAP 2.0 (a.k.a. CDU/CSU), recent surveys say they'll get around 45% in the upcoming election...)
CDU/CSU are conservatives, and they are far from any Nazi party. I don't like this party, I definitely will vote for someone else. But they are not Nazis.
I guess, it is part of the election campaign. the minister of justice already pointed out that they law might be in violation of the German constitution. So at last the German Federal Court will dismiss the law.
First of all, we have elections this year in Germany and politicians want to be seen as acting persons. So they make populistic decissions. The law is not to pass until after the election. Therefor it might be dropped after election. There is already a good reason for that, because even the minister of justice thinks the law is in violation of the German constitution.
But the real problem is, that the whole method is a hoax. They fix DNS servers so you get rerouted to this stop sign. So the easiest fix for every person who is able to open its network setup, is to change the primary nameserver or just use IPs.
Child pronography (CP) is illegal AFAIK in all countries. So if the BKA determined that there is CP present on a server they could track it and if the server is outside Germany they can get help in these countries. And because of that no such criminal would be so stupid to put CP directly on the Internet. Instead, so the child protection agency, they share it privately.
So this results in an placebo action against CP and so nothing real is done against these criminals.
There are different ways to change the political mainstream. Chomsky has some nice points on this subject. One important one is, that lies and manipulation through media can be circumvented by a constant effort to inform the public with real facts. With the Internet this is getting easier. However, you need a lot of time to do so.
Another important thing is, that change can happend through just doing it. For example, if you are convinced that conventional food is neither good for you nor good for the environment, and then you take action to consum only organic food, and you then tell people that you switched for a reason then this makes a change. A small one, but a convicing one. In the end more people will pick up this direction.
In Germany the market for organic food was growing over the past few years now by 6 to 10% each year, because the people did exactly that.
The same thing can be done in other areas. For example, propagating Open Source and free documents, music and videos, than this will change things as well. Remember the media industry needs to grow every year or they collapse. So if you can slow their growth and build a parallel model for arts, than the media industry will collapse.
I am reading the warrant. And so far, it looks like the algorithm used to generate the text was stripped from one of those scientific paper generators.
Example: All objects capable of storing digital data in any form, including but not limitied to central processing units ("CPUs"), optical scanners, digital cameras, modems, routers, memory sticks, thumb or USB drives, firewalls, tapes, zip drive disks, digital video disks ("DVDs"), and computerized printers [...]
This looks a little bit like: "Oh, what computer term have you heared recently? Let's put it on the list."
I hearby recommend to add to the list: monitors, paper of any kind, headsets, DRAM, USB ports, SCSI controller, BIOS, EEPROM, CDs (they really missed that), floppies of any size, and not to forget, video cards.
Furthermore they were interested in all applications, operating systems, and the documentation and manuals of those things.
However, they accuse him cracking a system and fixed grades. In addition they accuse him of owning illegal copies of movies and music.
These accusations are based on a statement of a witness, who was a friend of the accused person. So this is not really reliable, because this looks like: a) A and B are friends. A repairs therefore B's PC
b) A and B break up for whatever reason. c) A is nasty and posts a messages telling B is gay. d) B doesn't like taht for whatever reason. e) B goes to the police and makes idle accusations f) Police arrests A.
Surprisingly they will find illegal copies of music and movies on A's computer. I think you can get that from any computer of a student.
In Germany the sales tax is 19%. By a 190 EUR end price, this would be 159.66 EUR => 30.34 EUR difference. So this is the equivalent of 296667 units. Quite a lot for one reseller.
apt-cacher is great stuff and I strongly recommend it for setups with 2 or more machines. It svaes mirror bandwidth and your own bandwidth. So it is a time saver and for those of us who do not have the luxury of a flatrate, it svaes money too.
It is true that blocking sites is not helping against child porn. However, since when have political decisions to be based on logic?
Well we should compare to Nazi methods, but because people think the horrible things the Nazis did, were unique in history and there has been no greater murder before, the Nazi period is an infinitum. Nothing can be more evil than that.
When you look in human history you can find many genocides and attempts to do so. Also torture, murder and mistreatment are very common in our history.
The problem with those Nazi comparisons is, that they can be used to justify everything, because Nazi is equal to evil. And evil must be opposed. You can wage war on this, or plan your own mass killing, because the oponent is no longer a human, he became a devil.
They used same "logic" to legitimate the crusades. That's why Nazi comparisons are not really good in an discussion.
As a side note: The German minister of the interior sometimes reminds me about doctor Strange Love.
Some people here think Obama is stupid, but I think he is not the dumb person illustrated in this forum. First, he didn't say that he want to destroy all of them right now. He said that he want to talk with all weapon owners and reduce the number of nukes. Second, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) does not only state that nuclear weapon technology should not be distributed. It also includes the plan to dismantle all nuclear weapons. So Obama is only pointing out that we already agreed to do so. Third, the presence of nuclear weapons frightens other states so far, that they a) try to build their own and b) do not trust us. And why should they if we do not hold our word what can they do? Nothing. So it is reasonable to reduce the military dominance of the West a little bit.
Smaller forces during cold war? Germany had more the 500 000 soldiers and thousands of tanks available. Today the armed forces are down to 200 000 soldiers. The doctrine was that we should be able to win the war without nuclear weapons.
The electrolytic capacitor on the main board are also a typical part to fail. The hotter the system the shorter there lifetime. So a cool motherboard and system is required.
I have worked with people who can be categorized as coders. Some of them are good in writing down code blocks some of them are not so good at it. However, most of them arm poor in communicating, contributing in the design phase, or shutting up and implementing the stuff they're asked to do.
The problem is, that they like to code, but not to plan. But without proper planning no project ever gets finished. So the first problem is that they do not really contribute to the high-level design (if they are invited) then they are not very communicative when they are asked to contribute to the detailed design. Mostly for strange reasons: a) The high-level design is flawed in their eyes, but they never bothered to tell anybody when they were asked. b) The don't like one or two technical decisions. This demotivates them. When you reach implementation phase, they hate to read documentation of the design or underlying frameworks, which results in duplication of framework functions. They work that way because they like to code, but hate to read specs., framework documentation, or the design. Sometimes they deviate from the design, just because they think their idea is better than the concept in the design.
So it is difficult to catch them before they go crazy and you have to look after them often. At least until they know the routine. And the frameworks used.
It is easier to work with people with more CS knowledge, because they understand the necessary of proper planning and design. They are able to discuss design issues and most of them speak their mind. Also they are able to have a discussion and accept better arguments from their colleges. Also most of them are able to learn a new language more quickly.
Well what I wrote above is very black and white, but sometimes you have to exaggerate to make a point.
I don't think that the languages in Europe are all replaced by English.
Almost everyone in (.i.e) Germany has English as their second language at school and at least half of the university graduates are able to talk (more or less) fluent in English. However, their main language of communication is German. Even if German ins picking up some English vocabulary. This will not change the people to native English speakers. And neither the state nor the TV program will switch to English. And in the Netherlands, they show most TV-series in English, but still the people are speaking Dutch as first language.
Furthermore languages have always picked up vocabulary from other languages. The English language is no exception. Look at all these Latin and French words. And even some German words made it into English.
I think a market based approach is not really working. Especially not when you think it through. One problem will be that companies will start CO2-sinks based on certain technologies. These technologies could be harmful for the environment as well.
The actual problem with the CO2-certificates is that they are not reduced every year and they get it for free. So there is no need to invest in other technologies, because you can get enough certificates.
A better thing would be to reduce them every year until there are no more CO2 certificates available on the planet then CO2 sink capacities exist.
However this make steel and aluminum very expensive. And think about that an average US citizen is causing aprox. 20t CO2/year and in Europe it is something between 15-6t CO2/year. While the fair share would be 1.5t CO2/year.
We are talking about shelf ice. Shelf ice is like an ice cube in your coke. If the ice melts the coke level will neither rise nor fall. And the same thing happens when you are playing with large ice cubes in an ocean. And the salt concentration has nothing to do with it.
As you might know. The density of ice is lower than the density of water. That why ice is floating. The ice displaces exactly that amount of water which has the same weight as the ice. When now the ice melts, the resulting water fits perfectly in the hole the ice occupied in the ocean.
And for your salt concentration. Where do you think does shelf ice come from? One hint, they are not glacier material.
When I saw this news on/. I thought this is outrageous and ridiculous, but then I read the article and I can see now his problem. He was unhappy with certain functions and features in Linux desktop environments and their associated applications.
Furthermore it looks like he has chosen the wrong forums and mailing-lists to look for help. In addition he might have made unpleasant remarks. So he provoked such replies.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft wanted to add a file system with SQL access. They wanted to add that to Windows 2000, then XP, the Vista. And they announced a lot of other features which are normally not added to the final product or they do not fulfill any of the promises they made.
You are right. The best thing to do is to change things in your environment. This includes telling people why certain laws, decissions, etc. are bad.
If enough people think in da specific way, politicans come around, because they want to be elected.
I talked about this DNS blocking attempt with my sister, who is a part time politician in the city council. Before I talked to her, she was not really sure that the DNS block list is a bad thing. However, after the talk she is now against it. So sometimes it is really that the people do not know the facts and the implications. And it is our task to tell them.
No you have to add all those ferengi-like business people and of course most of those politicians too.
If you block google, the Internet will became useless to most people. Think of all those students, who google their thesis together, they would have to do it all by themselves.
The worst thing about this is, that they want to log all blocked dns requests AND after you get on the list YOU have to prove your innocence (and still german politicians call this a constitutional state)!
That's why the law will never survive the Federal Constitutional Court. They will dismiss it.
also they want to put sites on the list, that have links to a site on the list... recursively this will lead to the whole freakin internet to be on that list within a day and EVERYONE to be subjected to child-pornography-raids! (Kristallnacht, anyone?)
First: That would render the list useless. Even if they want to use the list results in court, they have to show evidence. That means they have to publish the DNS entries in question.
Second: You don't call it Kristallnacht, because this is a Nazi term. The correct term would be Reichspogromnacht. However, to compare the distruction of jewish property to this list is way out of line.
PLUS the brainwashed mob supports the NSDAP 2.0 (a.k.a. CDU/CSU), recent surveys say they'll get around 45% in the upcoming election...)
CDU/CSU are conservatives, and they are far from any Nazi party. I don't like this party, I definitely will vote for someone else. But they are not Nazis.
I guess, it is part of the election campaign. the minister of justice already pointed out that they law might be in violation of the German constitution. So at last the German Federal Court will dismiss the law.
First of all, we have elections this year in Germany and politicians want to be seen as acting persons. So they make populistic decissions. The law is not to pass until after the election. Therefor it might be dropped after election. There is already a good reason for that, because even the minister of justice thinks the law is in violation of the German constitution.
But the real problem is, that the whole method is a hoax. They fix DNS servers so you get rerouted to this stop sign. So the easiest fix for every person who is able to open its network setup, is to change the primary nameserver or just use IPs.
Child pronography (CP) is illegal AFAIK in all countries. So if the BKA determined that there is CP present on a server they could track it and if the server is outside Germany they can get help in these countries. And because of that no such criminal would be so stupid to put CP directly on the Internet. Instead, so the child protection agency, they share it privately.
So this results in an placebo action against CP and so nothing real is done against these criminals.
There are different ways to change the political mainstream. Chomsky has some nice points on this subject. One important one is, that lies and manipulation through media can be circumvented by a constant effort to inform the public with real facts. With the Internet this is getting easier. However, you need a lot of time to do so.
Another important thing is, that change can happend through just doing it. For example, if you are convinced that conventional food is neither good for you nor good for the environment, and then you take action to consum only organic food, and you then tell people that you switched for a reason then this makes a change. A small one, but a convicing one. In the end more people will pick up this direction.
In Germany the market for organic food was growing over the past few years now by 6 to 10% each year, because the people did exactly that.
The same thing can be done in other areas. For example, propagating Open Source and free documents, music and videos, than this will change things as well. Remember the media industry needs to grow every year or they collapse. So if you can slow their growth and build a parallel model for arts, than the media industry will collapse.
I am reading the warrant. And so far, it looks like the algorithm used to generate the text was stripped from one of those scientific paper generators.
Example:
All objects capable of storing digital data in any form, including but not limitied to central processing units ("CPUs"), optical scanners, digital cameras, modems, routers, memory sticks, thumb or USB drives, firewalls, tapes, zip drive disks, digital video disks ("DVDs"), and computerized printers [...]
This looks a little bit like: "Oh, what computer term have you heared recently? Let's put it on the list."
I hearby recommend to add to the list: monitors, paper of any kind, headsets, DRAM, USB ports, SCSI controller, BIOS, EEPROM, CDs (they really missed that), floppies of any size, and not to forget, video cards.
Furthermore they were interested in all applications, operating systems, and the documentation and manuals of those things.
However, they accuse him cracking a system and fixed grades. In addition they accuse him of owning illegal copies of movies and music.
These accusations are based on a statement of a witness, who was a friend of the accused person. So this is not really reliable, because this looks like:
a) A and B are friends. A repairs therefore B's PC
b) A and B break up for whatever reason.
c) A is nasty and posts a messages telling B is gay.
d) B doesn't like taht for whatever reason.
e) B goes to the police and makes idle accusations
f) Police arrests A.
Surprisingly they will find illegal copies of music and movies on A's computer. I think you can get that from any computer of a student.
Well, if so, Western governments should tell them, that imprissioning someone for being right, results in losing their face again.
Killing the messenger was always a good idea.
BND? Is that not the organization, which was caught by the Bavarian police for suggling a plutonium sample?
In Germany the sales tax is 19%. By a 190 EUR end price, this would be 159.66 EUR => 30.34 EUR difference. So this is the equivalent of 296667 units. Quite a lot for one reseller.
apt-cacher is great stuff and I strongly recommend it for setups with 2 or more machines. It svaes mirror bandwidth and your own bandwidth. So it is a time saver and for those of us who do not have the luxury of a flatrate, it svaes money too.
It is true that blocking sites is not helping against child porn. However, since when have political decisions to be based on logic?
Well we should compare to Nazi methods, but because people think the horrible things the Nazis did, were unique in history and there has been no greater murder before, the Nazi period is an infinitum. Nothing can be more evil than that.
When you look in human history you can find many genocides and attempts to do so. Also torture, murder and mistreatment are very common in our history.
The problem with those Nazi comparisons is, that they can be used to justify everything, because Nazi is equal to evil. And evil must be opposed. You can wage war on this, or plan your own mass killing, because the oponent is no longer a human, he became a devil.
They used same "logic" to legitimate the crusades. That's why Nazi comparisons are not really good in an discussion.
As a side note: The German minister of the interior sometimes reminds me about doctor Strange Love.
Some people here think Obama is stupid, but I think he is not the dumb person illustrated in this forum. First, he didn't say that he want to destroy all of them right now. He said that he want to talk with all weapon owners and reduce the number of nukes. Second, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) does not only state that nuclear weapon technology should not be distributed. It also includes the plan to dismantle all nuclear weapons. So Obama is only pointing out that we already agreed to do so.
Third, the presence of nuclear weapons frightens other states so far, that they a) try to build their own and b) do not trust us. And why should they if we do not hold our word what can they do? Nothing. So it is reasonable to reduce the military dominance of the West a little bit.
To understand my point, look at these numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures
Smaller forces during cold war? Germany had more the 500 000 soldiers and thousands of tanks available. Today the armed forces are down to 200 000 soldiers. The doctrine was that we should be able to win the war without nuclear weapons.
The electrolytic capacitor on the main board are also a typical part to fail. The hotter the system the shorter there lifetime. So a cool motherboard and system is required.
I have worked with people who can be categorized as coders. Some of them are good in writing down code blocks some of them are not so good at it. However, most of them arm poor in communicating, contributing in the design phase, or shutting up and implementing the stuff they're asked to do.
The problem is, that they like to code, but not to plan. But without proper planning no project ever gets finished. So the first problem is that they do not really contribute to the high-level design (if they are invited) then they are not very communicative when they are asked to contribute to the detailed design. Mostly for strange reasons:
a) The high-level design is flawed in their eyes, but they never bothered to tell anybody when they were asked.
b) The don't like one or two technical decisions. This demotivates them.
When you reach implementation phase, they hate to read documentation of the design or underlying frameworks, which results in duplication of framework functions. They work that way because they like to code, but hate to read specs., framework documentation, or the design. Sometimes they deviate from the design, just because they think their idea is better than the concept in the design.
So it is difficult to catch them before they go crazy and you have to look after them often. At least until they know the routine. And the frameworks used.
It is easier to work with people with more CS knowledge, because they understand the necessary of proper planning and design. They are able to discuss design issues and most of them speak their mind. Also they are able to have a discussion and accept better arguments from their colleges. Also most of them are able to learn a new language more quickly.
Well what I wrote above is very black and white, but sometimes you have to exaggerate to make a point.
I don't think that the languages in Europe are all replaced by English.
Almost everyone in (.i.e) Germany has English as their second language at school and at least half of the university graduates are able to talk (more or less) fluent in English. However, their main language of communication is German. Even if German ins picking up some English vocabulary. This will not change the people to native English speakers. And neither the state nor the TV program will switch to English. And in the Netherlands, they show most TV-series in English, but still the people are speaking Dutch as first language.
Furthermore languages have always picked up vocabulary from other languages. The English language is no exception. Look at all these Latin and French words. And even some German words made it into English.
And it is never bad to be able to speak one more language.
I think a market based approach is not really working. Especially not when you think it through. One problem will be that companies will start CO2-sinks based on certain technologies. These technologies could be harmful for the environment as well.
The actual problem with the CO2-certificates is that they are not reduced every year and they get it for free. So there is no need to invest in other technologies, because you can get enough certificates.
A better thing would be to reduce them every year until there are no more CO2 certificates available on the planet then CO2 sink capacities exist.
However this make steel and aluminum very expensive. And think about that an average US citizen is causing aprox. 20t CO2/year and in Europe it is something between 15-6t CO2/year. While the fair share would be 1.5t CO2/year.
We are talking about shelf ice. Shelf ice is like an ice cube in your coke. If the ice melts the coke level will neither rise nor fall. And the same thing happens when you are playing with large ice cubes in an ocean. And the salt concentration has nothing to do with it.
As you might know. The density of ice is lower than the density of water. That why ice is floating. The ice displaces exactly that amount of water which has the same weight as the ice. When now the ice melts, the resulting water fits perfectly in the hole the ice occupied in the ocean.
And for your salt concentration. Where do you think does shelf ice come from? One hint, they are not glacier material.
When I saw this news on /. I thought this is outrageous and ridiculous, but then I read the article and I can see now his problem. He was unhappy with certain functions and features in Linux desktop environments and their associated applications.
Furthermore it looks like he has chosen the wrong forums and mailing-lists to look for help. In addition he might have made unpleasant remarks. So he provoked such replies.
The hour, the GNOME foundation released plans for GNOME 3.0, the discussion of the new ideas started. There was quite a lot of criticism.