No. You can freely give up some portion of your right to say whatever-you-want in a _real_ contract (i.e. a contract signed by two parties, negotiated upon, etc.).
It is, however, true that terms in a contract that are generally opposed to the public interest are voidable in court _if_ they occur in a contract of adherence (a contract not individually negotiated, or a "standardized" contract). People generally assume that they retain their Constitutionally-guaranteed Free Speech rights, within the judicially established limits of this country, and thus this forms part of the general public interest. Contracts of adherence aren't apparently considered sufficient basis to make such a right go away. That's the argument that's being made here - based on my quick scan of the original case document from the New York State Attorney General's office, though I did not read the court's final decision, so I'm not sure if they bought that exact logic. IANAL though. So yes, the New York Times is oversimplifying.
Oh, I certainly agree with you from a moral and legal perspective that an EULA is meaningless since there are no characteristics of a contract at all.
Rather, the argument that Spitzer used seemed to be that because the contract was included in the box of a mass market software product and had terms that were anathema to the public interest, those terms should be thrown out (i.e. as in with a contract of adherence). He did not seem to make the argument that the EULA wasn't a contract at all and thus was invalid on the face of it (though I agree with you that it should be, and that some decisions have supported our view on this). Rather, this just reinforces that terms odious to the public interest should be thrown out from EULAs, and thus presumably that they are being interpreted as contracts of adherence, at least by this argument in this court.
There is a substantial difference between enterprise software vendors that require signed contracts and shrinkwrap EULAs.
My guess is that this ruling will lead to the conclusion that a shrinkwrap EULA can not contain restrictions on the right to commercial or academic speech about the product. I should hope that is the case - there are legal reasons (in the USA) that such "Contracts of Adhesion" (I believe that's what they are generally called) can not be expected to be read in detail by the person accepting the contract, and clauses like this are generally not enforceable. This should come as no surprise except to the imbeciles who've been pushing EULAs as some sort of magic legal protection for years now.
Of course, signed contracts between two parties are different beasts entirely. If you sign a contract for a $100,000 license for a database product, or some other large enterprise software system, they can probably put all sorts of clauses of this sort in there.
What P2P networks need is a built in web-of-trust model that allows users to vote on content. The more good content you are currently sharing (based on file hashes or whatever), the higher your trust level. The more flawed content you share (whether it's virus infested programs, or fake songs) the lower your rating gets. Rating takes place on individual pieces of content, not on users, since anonymity is fairly important. Though it would be nice and would make this model work better if some sort of persistent identity existed on the network that allowed hardcore users to develop higher trust ratings over time and therefore be more trusted to do content rating.
The alternative is the eDonkey 2000 model, which is have trusted sites that publish the hashes of known good content, and then just search the network for that content. Of course, eDonkey2k is so atrociously hard to use and cranky that it will never gain too much popularity (this is based on using it some 6 months to a year ago, maybe it's changed since then - of course, I think that is part of the point - make it only for |33+ folks, keep out the llamas so it doesn't get shut down).
There's something broken since the Slashcode "update" the other day. It doesn't seem to matter what state the checkbox is in, my posts are starting at 1. It's sort of annoying, because a lot of people don't really pay attention to posts at 1. I'm not a karma whore or anything, it's just strange given that I have maxed out my karma years ago that I'm no longer able to post at 2. I tried posting with the newly labeled "No Karma Bonus" checkbox both checked and unchecked and it seems like my posts are now at 1 both ways.
Do we really want to watch TV on our computers? I've tried it. It's fun for five minutes for a kick. Then I want to go chill on my couch in the living room. Thanks, but no thanks. We need hardware boxes with real TV tuner hardware in them and PVR functions that are as easy to use as Tivo, but support an open hardware platform so I can throw a _functioning_ network card in there, or that already comes with one (i.e. truly functional transfer of movies off the box onto my computer or DVDs/CDs for archiving). That would rock. Yes I know I can do it on a Tivo, and I have, but I assue you it doesn't work too reliably at all, and Tivo doesn't actually want you to do it (they don't mind people hacking their Tivos, but they don't want you transferring material out because they are afraid of the inevitable suing).
On an OT note, why do my posts seem to be going out at score:1 rather than score:2 by default? This Slashcode upgrade sucked. Gimme back the old Slashcode.
Listen, if you are going to be a nitpicker, at least do it correctly. See, for example, The American Heritage Definition of anti-semitism. The fact is that though Semitic refers to an ethnic group of people that includes both Arabs and Jews, the word anti-semitism has come to generally carry the connotation of dislike, hatred of or prejudice against Jews specifically. Webster's Revised Unabriged Dictionary says:
\An`ti-Sem"i*tism\, n. Opposition to, or hatred of, Semites, esp. Jews
And the American Heritage Dictionary says:
anti-Semitism (nt-sm-tzm, nt-) n.
1. Hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism.
2. Discrimination against Jews.
So I think the words modern meaning is pretty clear. Somebody posts this same post every time anybody uses the word, and it's just as bad (actually worse) than the people who bitch about the media's use of the word "hacker" rather than "cracker". The evolution of a language is not always perfectly logical, and the important part is that we commonly understand what the words mean.
But that's exactly my point. You should be able to download them, Mandrake should set up mirrors for MandrakeClub members. Since you've donated money to Mandrake, you should be able to download the ISOs. I'm just pointing out that the freeloaders are the problem. It's possible to stop freeloading without making the software any less Free.
The thing is that RedHat is focused as a business primarily on the server market. Yes, they are the overall most popular or at least most well-known Linux distro. They just haven't spent their time or energy primarily on making a friendly, easy-to-use desktop distro. And that's fine. But that's why I don't want to use Redhat itself.
Mandrake has always been a sort of Redhat-for-the-desktop and if they can't do it right, then hopefully somebody else will. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath waiting for Mandrake to figure out how to manage their QA process, I'm really hoping more that somebody else will come around that does what Mandrake should be doing, and can make a viable business out of it so they don't have to be begware.
Given how widely used and well liked Mandrake is, I wonder if they would be better eliminating free (as in beer/herpes/cost) ISOs as several other distros have done before them. I am a paying member of MandrakeClub, because I use Mandrake 9.0 and generally find it to be a great Desktop Linux. Urpmi is awesome, finally addressing the biggest weaknesses of RPM vs. DEB/apt-get - at least it's a lightyear better than where RPM was a few years ago. The Mandrake install is pretty smooth even for a newbie. And Mandrake gives you pretty much everything you need for a power user (well, I still take some issue with some of their default RPM choices, but they are correcting these issues as we speak).
Mandrake has done a fabulous job with 9.0 - amazingly good for a.0 release. The biggest weaknesses as I see it are that they still don't seem to release that if you are selling and marketing a desktop Linux distro, you MUST ship decent fonts and good anti-aliasing support built in. I had to download the Texstar RPMs to get Xft support working well and get my distro looking pretty. They are a company - they ought to license some damned decent TrueType fonts and ship em out of the box. Red Hat has a much better looking default desktop install, and it's not newbie-compliant to require two to three hours of tweaking a fresh install to get a decent looking desktop (the fact that their tool to import Windows fonts breaks ruggedly if you try to import from an NTFS filesystem - i.e. 80% of Win2k and WinXP installations is also unacceptable in a release-quality piece of software).
I feel like if they just went not even an extra mile, but an extra 100 yards they'd have a fabulous distro. I've finally migrated back to using Mandrake much of the time, which I abandoned a few years ago (for my day-to-day desktop work) for Windows 2000 since desktop usability was just not there yet, and because I needed Outlook and Word on a daily basis for work. Thank god OpenOffice.org has solved the Word issue for me, and Ximian mostly addresses the Outlook issue (though thankfully I no longer need the Outlook calendaring features that everybody at my old company fucking loved).
The educational system. That's where it all falls apart. I mean, I wish what you said were true, and in large part, it's more true in the USA than in almost every other country in the world. Entrepreneurship and the American dream of running your own business are key parts of that. We are open to the idea of economic and social mobility in this country, and that's great.
The problem is that the poorer elements of society get shafted by 1) Parents that neglect them and fail to instill basic values in them, like the fact that a good education is critical and that intellectual pursuits are worthwhile and that financial success, stability, and independence is an achievable and worthwhile goal. 2) An educational system that is so defective it keeps the best and brightest down and focuses all of its efforts on the mediocre to idiot-calibre people.
I'm not knocking programs like special education, which are nice and everything, but the spending on gifted education should be AT LEAST that of special ed. Let's be honest - who are the people who are going to be moving the economy forward in the future? Shouldn't our schools invest in them? In the end, most of the problem comes down to societal factors like the aforementioned parents with their fucked up values. At the least, though, our schools need to afford everybody an opportunity to achieve their potential so they might go on to better their social and financial status in life.
I was lucky. I got out in 10th grade and went to a private school. And my own children, when I have them, will never see the inside of a public school if I have anything to say about it. And luckily, I can afford that because I had a supportive family that valued my education, eventually went to a great school (okay, that's not gonna make the hordes of idiots in the world suddenly become really bright, but at least it could push up the curve somewhat and improve all of our standards of living, happiness, and certainly make our Democracy into a far more functional system - most of the fucking morons in this country don't deserve a vote as things stand now).
Yes. Patent license fees. The standard is completely "open" in the sense that you can read full and complete specs and probably even get your hands on a reference implementation without cost. Of course, to distribute any product using the MPEG-4 standard, whether distributed for free or for charge, requires licensing a patent bundle from the MPEG consortium, patents which were filed by the members of the MPEG consortium.
This is RAND licensing, folks. The same fine mess the W3C wants to get into. It hinders adoption, plain and simple, and locks out the Free Software community. I don't mind so much if companies want to keep intellectual property to themselves, but don't go around claiming it's a fucking "standard" if I can't implement it without paying you a fortune for the right to do so.
A basic introduction on the environmental impact of biomass-to-ethanol: http://www.afdc.doe.gov/pdfs/ 4847.pdf
What you failed to understand is that what I was talking about were _WASTE_ byproducts. That's right, those mills AND furniture manufacturer AND sugar makers AND other industries have waste cellulose that they don't use because it's of insufficient quality for use in paper etc. From mills it's bark, woodchips, and sawdust, from construction and demolition it's waste wood, from EVERYWHERE it's yard trimmings.
See this document for much more detail: http://www.afdc.doe.gov/pdfs/6938.pdf
And by the way, the energy balance of corn ethanol discussed here. It's actually not as bad as people claim: http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-813.pdf
Also, apparently I mislabelled bagasse - bagasse is sugarcane cellulosic residue, not a cellulosic material from separate plants. In any case, here's an economic analysis on the use of bagasse to produce ethanol for energy in India: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy01osti/28705.pd f
My use of the word "swamp" apparently offended you, but I assure you, I mean only the use of land that is generally less valuable for other crops and does not represent a major environmental habitat for too many species. You have to recognize that there is a tradeoff here - use some amount of land for supplemental energy crops vs. continue to be dependent on burning massively more polluting, non-renewable fossil fuels and continuing our dependence on the Middle East and supporting terrorists when we fuel up. The alternative I propose and the NREL proposes is on the balance, far superior.
Your point about the production of ethanol from corn feedstock via traditional fermentation methods is true. Primarily because it's expensive and costly in terms of energy input to get the glucose and other sugars because you have to grow and harvest a crop that takes quite a bit of energy to produce.
What my post talks about if you read it, is what is generally referred to as "bioethanol". Of course, ethanol from corn sugars is biological in origin, but what most people call bioethanol is ethanol produced from biomass or lignocellulosic feedstock.
That means _waste_ cellulose. Such as corn fibers, not the corn iteself, or pulp/wood chip byproducts from the milling/cardboard industries, and "waste" crops such as bagasse in Louisiana that grow in swamp land (i.e. land not arable for production of more valuable crops and that grow with very little external water and energy input and thus are very low in terms of actual feedstock cost including any energy input).
The cellulosic chains are broken down and the constituent glucose and xylose sugar molecules are fermented - there are several processes such as SSF (Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation), steam-cracking weak acid hydrolysis, and recirculating strong acid hydrolysis, which are all more-or-less viable for this process.
I shall not defend the corn ethanol industry - you are correct in saying that they exist because of federal subsidies. I am promoting a process for taking otherwise "valueless" biomass that would end up in land fills or lie unused elsewhere that can be obtained at relatively low cost and converted into a relatively high value energy product.
To get useful grow rates out of lipid producing bacteria, you need to pipe CO_2 into the water, you need LOTS of surface area (and thus concrete etc. to build the pools), and so forth.
And you don't use much sewage that way anyway. Yes, sewage can possibly serve as part of the nutrient mix for the algae growth medium. Like I said though, the use of sewage doesn't fundamentally change the economics of biodiesel-from-algae, and I've about 15-20 papers on the growth rates, lipid fraction measurements, and cost analyses. When you factor in the land costs, it's not cheap (primarily because you can efficiently use at most 2-3 inch deep ponds), even if you try to use "natural bottom ponds" and avoid cement laying costs.
There are folks doing stuff sorta like that. Direct biomass combustion, and biomass cofiring in coal power plants, some of which involves using waste materials that would otherwise go to landfill. But I don't know if anyone is doing it with raw sewage.
Separating out the useful components of sewage (perhaps waste cellulose in human fecal matter... ewwww) to produce energy probably would undoubtedly use a lot more energy than you could extract from it. Though I think there are anaerobic digestion systems in use in some sewage plants to extract methane and burn it in a turbine, pumping the generated electricity back into the grid.
The economics of biodiesel aren't competitive with fossil fuel diesel in bulk, unfortunately. In small scales, it can be made with waste oils (say, from Fry-a-laters in fast food joints). In bulk, an efficient bioproduction mechanism is needed to generate lipid feedstock. Algal production of biodiesel has some promise, but the economics are just not there for making and extracting lipids from genetically engineered bacteria in mass aquaculture YET. The government poured tens of millions of dollars into the Aquatic Species Program largely with that goal in mind over the late 70s and throughout the 80s at the NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab). The program got axed in 96 or 97, I believe, because the technology wasn't there yet to really make this close to economical.
Honestly, bioethanol has much more short term potential than biodiesel. Lignocellulosic feedstock is available in bulk, and the baseline economics are pretty good - a modest scale facility using existing technology could be built today that would make ethanol at a total cost of probably 1.30-1.60 per gallon if feedstock availability is good and cost is cheap (this works out to probably 1.70-1.90 per gallon equivalent of standard gasoline). In other words, with another 15-20% efficiency improvement followed by scale increases to reduce the amortized fixed cost of plant+facilities per gallon, it could be price competitive with gasoline. And there are already well over 1 million FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) on the road today that could burn E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline mix) without modification - most people who own these cars don't even realize it.
Ethanol has real potential and some of us are working on making it into a business reality.
Yes, and this can trivially be enforced by TECHNOLOGICAL means (cookie/REFERRER field or both). And by far, the vast majority of sites DON'T. The problem isn't people who don't want deep linking, the problem is thinking that the law should step in when they choose to put content out there that is accessible on the World Wide Web (i.e. publically accessible and retrievable hyperlinked documents that use the HTTP protocol). The legal system has no business making deep linking illegal, and unless the content is private and requires agreeing to and signing a legally binding contract stating that material may not be linked to, this doesn't have a remote legal or moral basis to stand on.
Scottus - there are several other key concepts that I think could help make the idea fly better. Some of these are clever features and bits of technology that might add value to the offering, and some are obvious concepts. Clearly, you need to ink two or three substantive content deals before you have a significant value proposition to the consumer. BTW - I see that you and your partner are MIT alums. You should definitely drop me an email, I would love to chat more about the business opportunity here, and would like to hear about the problems and issues you guys have encountered in your pitch.
No, since the kind of organization I'm talking about is voluntary - websites are looking for business models to fund their ongoing creation of content, what I'm talking about is just one possible model that might work a bit better than pure advertising does, and would spare paying users subjection to the massive amounts of annoying ads on the web and spare users having to subscribe to many separate sites and pay separate fees for all of them (not to mention have your personal info spread all over which leads to spam,spam,spam in your inbox).
I am certainly not talking about purchasing or ruling over the content producing companies - that's more like an AOL/TW model than what I was proposing (which is an aggregator/middleman model to support semi-equitable funds distribution between independent content producers aka websites). I think the cable company analogy another responder gave works fairly well, if you take it a level further and think of a "package" of cable channels from your cable company as analogous to what I'm proposing (except that geographical monopoly isn't an issue on the internet).
Hmm, looking back at the 1201(b) I gather you are correct that there is a "primary use" standard similar to Sony v. Universal. In fact, it *seems* like it mostly codifies Sony v. Universal at first glace. There is however a subtle difference - under Sony v. Universal, the standard is that the primary purpose of a device must be to infringe copyright, whereas under 1201(b) the act of trafficking in circumvention devices where the primary intent is to *circumvent access control* itself is a crime, regardless of whether it can be proved that the primary intent was to infringe copyright.
For example, in DVD CSS, it can be clearly argued that the primary intent of DeCSS etc. is to allow playback of DVDs on other platforms - in other words, that the primary purpose is not necessarily copyright infringement, merely access to legally owned materials. Under the DMCA, it doesn't really matter, since the primary intent of DeCSS etc. is pretty clearly to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" (whether CSS meets the effectively standard is a different question).
I think you missed the point. Under existing copyright law, it's illegal to use such a feature for purposes other than those protected by Fair Use (for example, transmitting a show for educational purposes only to a specific individual, or using such a feature to make a backup, or using such a feature with permission from a copyright holder, or so on. Prosecution of an individual for breaking copyright law using the ability to get content out of some set top PVR box has always been possible.
However, the person who made the box, provided the feature, or wrote a piece of software to get data out of a Tivo (ExtractStream) to the best of my knowledge did not themselves infringe existing copyright law. That's why the DMCA is relevant. Contributory infringement, admittedly, already existed, but there is a redline test involving "primary purpose or effect". The DMCA doesn't require any such test to be applied if "circumvention" has occured (no this isn't a formal legal analysis, just my current recollection).
Agreed, I have proposed several times a plan to get content providers together under a common subscription-plan. Cooperation of the major ISPs isn't even a requirement, though it would certainly increase adoption. All that's needed is a willingness on the part of the content providers to agree that their share of the common syndication profits needs to be proportional to the amount of usage they get. This is, I think, the biggest roadblock. Most content providers will probably argue that the quality of their content is better, or that their content costs more to produce than others content. Thus, viewing their content should cost more. Now you've just converted an economic negotiation between the browser/content consumer and the content provider (i.e. if you want to view our content, sign up for our flat-priced monthly service, or use our micropayment system or whatever) into a negotiation between the syndicator/content conglomerate and each content provider. You are unlikely to produce a system in which each participant feels like it's a fair enough deal that they want to participate unless there is some sort of economic decision-making on the part of the consumer.
This is why micropayments make some sense. However, as you have pointed out, micropayments are definitely more of a PITA (pain in the ass) for simple webbrowsing ("3 cents a page view? Fuck this!") than I think most people would be willing to stand.
I think the ideal solution would be a compromise - content syndication, flat monthly membership for access to a wide variety of web content where the content providers get a proportional share to the amount of raw usage of their actual "members-only" content. Premium content would be labelled as such, and would cause micropayment-style charges to accrue to your content syndicate account.
I actually think the other key selling point here would be the ability to control your own information. It's not too hard to imagine (and I have sketched out a framework for doing this) the content syndicate as a trusted organization that allows billing and personal information handling to be handled by third party "trust repositories" (sort of like the equivalent of setting up a VISA card account with a member bank that offers VISA cards) so that the content syndicate itself can't screw you over, and there can be competition on multiple levels.
This is the kind of thing that the Open Source community should get behind - go beyond making a simple alternative to Passport (the DotGNU folks and some others are working on things like this), and support a framework that actually innovates when it comes to rewarding content providers fairly and empowering web consumers... okay that sounds like marketing tripe, but hopefully you see the value in a proposal like this. Now please go ahead and flame away at my proposal.:)
I've been trying to figure this one out myself. Just because people CAN click on it (i.e. it's a hyperlink) doesn't mean that people WILL click on it. And just because people don't click on it doesn't mean that they didn't see and note what it was promoting or that they weren't interested at all. I think people would be more inclined to click on banner ads if A) They were ads for useful products or services relevant to me and to the topic matter of the site I'm currently on (like Slashdot, which does a pretty damned good job at having "interesting" "tech-related" "geeky" advertisers, and I actually DO sometimes click on banner ads) and B) They hadn't become so embittered by years of fighting off annoying pop-ups, pop-unders, hijacking Flash ads, and other shit where the immediate goal is to get it the fuck out of your way.
Advertisers signed their own pink slips when they decided these extremely annoying ads were beneficial to them. But honestly, if we get rid of all that atrocious crap and go back to reasonable, targetted banner ads (which in a while will be the only things left that work, since everybody and their mother will eventually get pop-up blockers, thanks to the abuse of the advertisers and sites that permit it), I think advertisers will find that banner ads can be MORE effective per eyeball than TV ads, for example, by virtue of being targetted to a much more appropriate audience. But to expect more than the building of brand-name recognition and acceptance from ads, like the immediate desire to run and buy a product or service, is pretty much ridiculous since people don't want to interrupt what they PAY to be able to do, namely browse the web, for your fucking product.
I also think the prevalence of "middle-click tab opening" and features like this may increase clickthrough rates - if I can see a banner ad I like and flag it as something I want to check out more thoroughly when I'm finished with my current train of thought (Open in a New Tab) I'm more likely to click on it since it becomes a non-interruptive process.
Fucking overkill anyway. Would you be happy with a less than 1x10^12 chance that a number isn't prime? Easy to do with Miller-Rabin. There's also a chance you'll get run over by a steamroller the second you walk out of your home this morning. It's less than that. The weakness with the fucking Xbox is not going to be had by brute-forcing a 2048-bit RSA key, I would guess, since there are surely easier ways to go about it, and weakspots that don't require a brute force of the key.
Slashdot Mirror
It is, however, true that terms in a contract that are generally opposed to the public interest are voidable in court _if_ they occur in a contract of adherence (a contract not individually negotiated, or a "standardized" contract). People generally assume that they retain their Constitutionally-guaranteed Free Speech rights, within the judicially established limits of this country, and thus this forms part of the general public interest. Contracts of adherence aren't apparently considered sufficient basis to make such a right go away. That's the argument that's being made here - based on my quick scan of the original case document from the New York State Attorney General's office, though I did not read the court's final decision, so I'm not sure if they bought that exact logic. IANAL though. So yes, the New York Times is oversimplifying.
Rather, the argument that Spitzer used seemed to be that because the contract was included in the box of a mass market software product and had terms that were anathema to the public interest, those terms should be thrown out (i.e. as in with a contract of adherence). He did not seem to make the argument that the EULA wasn't a contract at all and thus was invalid on the face of it (though I agree with you that it should be, and that some decisions have supported our view on this). Rather, this just reinforces that terms odious to the public interest should be thrown out from EULAs, and thus presumably that they are being interpreted as contracts of adherence, at least by this argument in this court.
My guess is that this ruling will lead to the conclusion that a shrinkwrap EULA can not contain restrictions on the right to commercial or academic speech about the product. I should hope that is the case - there are legal reasons (in the USA) that such "Contracts of Adhesion" (I believe that's what they are generally called) can not be expected to be read in detail by the person accepting the contract, and clauses like this are generally not enforceable. This should come as no surprise except to the imbeciles who've been pushing EULAs as some sort of magic legal protection for years now.
Of course, signed contracts between two parties are different beasts entirely. If you sign a contract for a $100,000 license for a database product, or some other large enterprise software system, they can probably put all sorts of clauses of this sort in there.
The alternative is the eDonkey 2000 model, which is have trusted sites that publish the hashes of known good content, and then just search the network for that content. Of course, eDonkey2k is so atrociously hard to use and cranky that it will never gain too much popularity (this is based on using it some 6 months to a year ago, maybe it's changed since then - of course, I think that is part of the point - make it only for |33+ folks, keep out the llamas so it doesn't get shut down).
There's something broken since the Slashcode "update" the other day. It doesn't seem to matter what state the checkbox is in, my posts are starting at 1. It's sort of annoying, because a lot of people don't really pay attention to posts at 1. I'm not a karma whore or anything, it's just strange given that I have maxed out my karma years ago that I'm no longer able to post at 2. I tried posting with the newly labeled "No Karma Bonus" checkbox both checked and unchecked and it seems like my posts are now at 1 both ways.
On an OT note, why do my posts seem to be going out at score:1 rather than score:2 by default? This Slashcode upgrade sucked. Gimme back the old Slashcode.
\An`ti-Sem"i*tism\, n. Opposition to, or hatred of, Semites, esp. Jews
And the American Heritage Dictionary says:
anti-Semitism (nt-sm-tzm, nt-)
n.
1. Hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism.
2. Discrimination against Jews.
So I think the words modern meaning is pretty clear. Somebody posts this same post every time anybody uses the word, and it's just as bad (actually worse) than the people who bitch about the media's use of the word "hacker" rather than
"cracker". The evolution of a language is not always perfectly logical, and the important part is that we commonly understand what the words mean.
But that's exactly my point. You should be able to download them, Mandrake should set up mirrors for MandrakeClub members. Since you've donated money to Mandrake, you should be able to download the ISOs. I'm just pointing out that the freeloaders are the problem. It's possible to stop freeloading without making the software any less Free.
Mandrake has always been a sort of Redhat-for-the-desktop and if they can't do it right, then hopefully somebody else will. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath waiting for Mandrake to figure out how to manage their QA process, I'm really hoping more that somebody else will come around that does what Mandrake should be doing, and can make a viable business out of it so they don't have to be begware.
Mandrake has done a fabulous job with 9.0 - amazingly good for a
I feel like if they just went not even an extra mile, but an extra 100 yards they'd have a fabulous distro. I've finally migrated back to using Mandrake much of the time, which I abandoned a few years ago (for my day-to-day desktop work) for Windows 2000 since desktop usability was just not there yet, and because I needed Outlook and Word on a daily basis for work. Thank god OpenOffice.org has solved the Word issue for me, and Ximian mostly addresses the Outlook issue (though thankfully I no longer need the Outlook calendaring features that everybody at my old company fucking loved).
The problem is that the poorer elements of society get shafted by 1) Parents that neglect them and fail to instill basic values in them, like the fact that a good education is critical and that intellectual pursuits are worthwhile and that financial success, stability, and independence is an achievable and worthwhile goal. 2) An educational system that is so defective it keeps the best and brightest down and focuses all of its efforts on the mediocre to idiot-calibre people.
I'm not knocking programs like special education, which are nice and everything, but the spending on gifted education should be AT LEAST that of special ed. Let's be honest - who are the people who are going to be moving the economy forward in the future? Shouldn't our schools invest in them?
In the end, most of the problem comes down to societal factors like the aforementioned parents with their fucked up values. At the least, though, our schools need to afford everybody an opportunity to achieve their potential so they might go on to better their social and financial status in life.
I was lucky. I got out in 10th grade and went to a private school. And my own children, when I have them, will never see the inside of a public school if I have anything to say about it. And luckily, I can afford that because I had a supportive family that valued my education, eventually went to a great school (okay, that's not gonna make the hordes of idiots in the world suddenly become really bright, but at least it could push up the curve somewhat and improve all of our standards of living, happiness, and certainly make our Democracy into a far more functional system - most of the fucking morons in this country don't deserve a vote as things stand now).
This is RAND licensing, folks. The same fine mess the W3C wants to get into. It hinders adoption, plain and simple, and locks out the Free Software community. I don't mind so much if companies want to keep intellectual property to themselves, but don't go around claiming it's a fucking "standard" if I can't implement it without paying you a fortune for the right to do so.
http://www.afdc.doe.gov/pdfs
What you failed to understand is that what I was talking about were _WASTE_ byproducts. That's right, those mills AND furniture manufacturer AND sugar makers AND other industries have waste cellulose that they don't use because it's of insufficient quality for use in paper etc. From mills it's bark, woodchips, and sawdust, from construction and demolition it's waste wood, from EVERYWHERE it's yard trimmings.
See this document for much more detail:
http://www.afdc.doe.gov/pdfs/6938.pdf
And by the way, the energy balance of corn ethanol discussed here. It's actually not as bad as people claim:
http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-813.pdf
Also, apparently I mislabelled bagasse - bagasse is sugarcane cellulosic residue, not a cellulosic material from separate plants. In any case, here's an economic analysis on the use of bagasse to produce ethanol for energy in India:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy01osti/28705.p
My use of the word "swamp" apparently offended you, but I assure you, I mean only the use of land that is generally less valuable for other crops and does not represent a major environmental habitat for too many species. You have to recognize that there is a tradeoff here - use some amount of land for supplemental energy crops vs. continue to be dependent on burning massively more polluting, non-renewable fossil fuels and continuing our dependence on the Middle East and supporting terrorists when we fuel up. The alternative I propose and the NREL proposes is on the balance, far superior.
What my post talks about if you read it, is what is generally referred to as "bioethanol". Of course, ethanol from corn sugars is biological in origin, but what most people call bioethanol is ethanol produced from biomass or lignocellulosic feedstock.
That means _waste_ cellulose. Such as corn fibers, not the corn iteself, or pulp/wood chip byproducts from the milling/cardboard industries, and "waste" crops such as bagasse in Louisiana that grow in swamp land (i.e. land not arable for production of more valuable crops and that grow with very little external water and energy input and thus are very low in terms of actual feedstock cost including any energy input).
The cellulosic chains are broken down and the constituent glucose and xylose sugar molecules are fermented - there are several processes such as SSF (Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation), steam-cracking weak acid hydrolysis, and recirculating strong acid hydrolysis, which are all more-or-less viable for this process.
I shall not defend the corn ethanol industry - you are correct in saying that they exist because of federal subsidies. I am promoting a process for taking otherwise "valueless" biomass that would end up in land fills or lie unused elsewhere that can be obtained at relatively low cost and converted into a relatively high value energy product.
And you don't use much sewage that way anyway. Yes, sewage can possibly serve as part of the nutrient mix for the algae growth medium. Like I said though, the use of sewage doesn't fundamentally change the economics of biodiesel-from-algae, and I've about 15-20 papers on the growth rates, lipid fraction measurements, and cost analyses. When you factor in the land costs, it's not cheap (primarily because you can efficiently use at most 2-3 inch deep ponds), even if you try to use "natural bottom ponds" and avoid cement laying costs.
Separating out the useful components of sewage (perhaps waste cellulose in human fecal matter... ewwww) to produce energy probably would undoubtedly use a lot more energy than you could extract from it. Though I think there are anaerobic digestion systems in use in some sewage plants to extract methane and burn it in a turbine, pumping the generated electricity back into the grid.
Honestly, bioethanol has much more short term potential than biodiesel. Lignocellulosic feedstock is available in bulk, and the baseline economics are pretty good - a modest scale facility using existing technology could be built today that would make ethanol at a total cost of probably 1.30-1.60 per gallon if feedstock availability is good and cost is cheap (this works out to probably 1.70-1.90 per gallon equivalent of standard gasoline). In other words, with another 15-20% efficiency improvement followed by scale increases to reduce the amortized fixed cost of plant+facilities per gallon, it could be price competitive with gasoline. And there are already well over 1 million FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) on the road today that could burn E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline mix) without modification - most people who own these cars don't even realize it.
Ethanol has real potential and some of us are working on making it into a business reality.
Yes, and this can trivially be enforced by TECHNOLOGICAL means (cookie/REFERRER field or both). And by far, the vast majority of sites DON'T. The problem isn't people who don't want deep linking, the problem is thinking that the law should step in when they choose to put content out there that is accessible on the World Wide Web (i.e. publically accessible and retrievable hyperlinked documents that use the HTTP protocol). The legal system has no business making deep linking illegal, and unless the content is private and requires agreeing to and signing a legally binding contract stating that material may not be linked to, this doesn't have a remote legal or moral basis to stand on.
Scottus - there are several other key concepts that I think could help make the idea fly better. Some of these are clever features and bits of technology that might add value to the offering, and some are obvious concepts. Clearly, you need to ink two or three substantive content deals before you have a significant value proposition to the consumer. BTW - I see that you and your partner are MIT alums. You should definitely drop me an email, I would love to chat more about the business opportunity here, and would like to hear about the problems and issues you guys have encountered in your pitch.
I am certainly not talking about purchasing or ruling over the content producing companies - that's more like an AOL/TW model than what I was proposing (which is an aggregator/middleman model to support semi-equitable funds distribution between independent content producers aka websites). I think the cable company analogy another responder gave works fairly well, if you take it a level further and think of a "package" of cable channels from your cable company as analogous to what I'm proposing (except that geographical monopoly isn't an issue on the internet).
For example, in DVD CSS, it can be clearly argued that the primary intent of DeCSS etc. is to allow playback of DVDs on other platforms - in other words, that the primary purpose is not necessarily copyright infringement, merely access to legally owned materials. Under the DMCA, it doesn't really matter, since the primary intent of DeCSS etc. is pretty clearly to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" (whether CSS meets the effectively standard is a different question).
However, the person who made the box, provided the feature, or wrote a piece of software to get data out of a Tivo (ExtractStream) to the best of my knowledge did not themselves infringe existing copyright law. That's why the DMCA is relevant. Contributory infringement, admittedly, already existed, but there is a redline test involving "primary purpose or effect". The DMCA doesn't require any such test to be applied if "circumvention" has occured (no this isn't a formal legal analysis, just my current recollection).
This is why micropayments make some sense. However, as you have pointed out, micropayments are definitely more of a PITA (pain in the ass) for simple webbrowsing ("3 cents a page view? Fuck this!") than I think most people would be willing to stand.
I think the ideal solution would be a compromise - content syndication, flat monthly membership for access to a wide variety of web content where the content providers get a proportional share to the amount of raw usage of their actual "members-only" content. Premium content would be labelled as such, and would cause micropayment-style charges to accrue to your content syndicate account.
I actually think the other key selling point here would be the ability to control your own information. It's not too hard to imagine (and I have sketched out a framework for doing this) the content syndicate as a trusted organization that allows billing and personal information handling to be handled by third party "trust repositories" (sort of like the equivalent of setting up a VISA card account with a member bank that offers VISA cards) so that the content syndicate itself can't screw you over, and there can be competition on multiple levels.
This is the kind of thing that the Open Source community should get behind - go beyond making a simple alternative to Passport (the DotGNU folks and some others are working on things like this), and support a framework that actually innovates when it comes to rewarding content providers fairly and empowering web consumers... okay that sounds like marketing tripe, but hopefully you see the value in a proposal like this. Now please go ahead and flame away at my proposal.
Advertisers signed their own pink slips when they decided these extremely annoying ads were beneficial to them. But honestly, if we get rid of all that atrocious crap and go back to reasonable, targetted banner ads (which in a while will be the only things left that work, since everybody and their mother will eventually get pop-up blockers, thanks to the abuse of the advertisers and sites that permit it), I think advertisers will find that banner ads can be MORE effective per eyeball than TV ads, for example, by virtue of being targetted to a much more appropriate audience. But to expect more than the building of brand-name recognition and acceptance from ads, like the immediate desire to run and buy a product or service, is pretty much ridiculous since people don't want to interrupt what they PAY to be able to do, namely browse the web, for your fucking product.
I also think the prevalence of "middle-click tab opening" and features like this may increase clickthrough rates - if I can see a banner ad I like and flag it as something I want to check out more thoroughly when I'm finished with my current train of thought (Open in a New Tab) I'm more likely to click on it since it becomes a non-interruptive process.
Fucking overkill anyway. Would you be happy with a less than 1x10^12 chance that a number isn't prime? Easy to do with Miller-Rabin. There's also a chance you'll get run over by a steamroller the second you walk out of your home this morning. It's less than that. The weakness with the fucking Xbox is not going to be had by brute-forcing a 2048-bit RSA key, I would guess, since there are surely easier ways to go about it, and weakspots that don't require a brute force of the key.