Ask the families of the 50 people taken hostage by real pirates off Somali waters the other day how funny talk like a pirate day is. The caricature of pirates in the general public as comical is one thing (albeit of many) that hinders getting world support to eradicate piracy. Piracy is real, it is rampant, and it is deadly.
Put it in this light. How socially acceptable would it be to have a "talk like a mugger" day... a "talk like a murderer" day, or maybe to round it off, a "talk like a terrorist" day?
This is the way they can get.xxx,.g0ats3ks and.anythingelse without coming out and, as an organization, "supporting" it. Plus, they get a truck load of money doing it. So, basically they have turned into equivocating greedy bastards like anyone else.
The problem I have is with the dispute resolution system. According to Paul Twomey of ICANN (as quoted by the BBC), "[i]f there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder."
So, I pick a name, and McDeepPockets comes along and thinks, hey, that's a great idea - I'll just take that, thank-you. They "dispute" it, and ICANN's response is... well, if you really can't settle your differences, high bidder gets it. Wow... that's going to make for a pretty mercenary internet.
Most certainly because many people fear that the risk of disabled children is higher in incest pairings. Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.
As I pointed out in another post, there are many many forms of sexuality that don't involve any risk of pregnancy. The word incest implies intercourse, so let's drop that and go with sexual contact. I am prohibited from engaging in any sort of sexual behaviour with my children. I find that idea repugnant (the sexual contact, not the prohibition of it) - but why do I find it so?
Libertarians. Making victimless actions crimes is an authoritarian thing, where you pass on your morals on others without any connection.
Is child pornography victimless? This is something I have a hard time accepting. Which likely stems from my belief that sexual contact with children is wrong. And there are some who might consider there to always be at least one victim of child pornography, just as there is always at least one with drug abuse. Many psychological addictions are accepted behavioural disorders. I for one am not going to wave my arms in the air and tell another country they are wrong to want to protect their citizens from that - as long as a significant enough majority go along with it.
I don't think it's flawed idea on its face that a society would want to censor child pornography. Our own society has many many forms of censorship which are well accepted. Censorship of libellous writing and hate speech. Censorship due to copyright and patent law. Censorship due to privacy constraints and censorship incidental to legal actions. Most people believe censorship in general to be wrong, but believe that there are times when it's necessary. When the harm inherent in the content spreading outweighs the harm of censorship. Censorship is dangerous, but I really hate it when that word shows up here and everyone jumps on it like its a plague. Oh my heavens - they're trying to censor us, break out the pitchforks. What I'm trying to do, clumsily perhaps, is point out that maybe the method they are using in France is actually a good way to implement it. A method of censorship that varies in effectiveness with the amount of support it has from the population involved. If the people don't want it, I think it just won't work. If they really all do get on board with it, then as far as I'm concerned, good for them for finding a community solution and working together.
I spoke of sexuality, not pregnancy. There are many many forms of sexuality that involve no risk of pregnancy. Really, though, that was just an example. One I chose because it was in the same genre as the pornography laws they set up. There are many other examples of things that are malum prohibitum, but let me back up and be more generic. This particular implementation seems to me to be one that would only work if it is has the support of the public. I don't see much difference between this and taxes, or getting a marriage license, or any other myriad of things that must be done or not done not because there is something inherently wrong involved, but because the society has, for its own reasons, decided to regulate or proscribe those actions. Or maybe they believe there is something wrong with it. The point is, if a group of people decide that certain types of pornography are wrong and they decide that the dangers associated with it are more than the dangers associated with censorship, then who are we to say they are bad to do it?
Do you think there is an absolute moral right and wrong? Do you believe in God? If so, then I'd suggest most religions would agree that pornography is bad, and we get the same result. However you roll it, you have either one of two things. Either A) the majority of people in France believe that certain pornography is bad, and they want to work together to eliminate it from their networks, which if enough of a majority work together might work or B) the majority of people don't feel that way, and any technical method involving the solicitation of public support for eliminating it will be so ineffectual as to not be worth worrying about. In either case, who are we on the outside to say it's wrong? Who are we to deny them the right to decide right and wrong for themselves?
If the French people are on board with this, and they find a way to make it work, then who are we to say it's censorship and bad? Why is incest illegal? Why don't we introduce children to sexuality? In the strictest sense, these things are malum prohibitum, not malum in se. If sexuality is good, then why forbid it between family members or children? We do that because these are things that, as a society, we believe to be wrong. And because we feel that allowing them would open the door to abuse, making the dangers of those behaviours outweigh their potential good.
If the people of France feel that the dangers inherent in certain pornography outweigh their good, then who are we to say out of hand this is a bad thing? I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work. Sure you'll have people who will be able to circumvent it, but I don't see this as a system they are intending to be safe from circumvention. Just a national net-nanny system. If that's what they want, then I say we apply the live and let live to them as a group and say great - more power to you.
If this was an instance of the violation of the law of thermodynamics, it wouldn't have been introduced to the world as a new car. It would have been heralded as the wondrous piece of science it would have been. It would turn science on its ear and literally change everything we think we know. You'll forgive my incredible scepticism when someone comes around with a scheme to break that law in the form of a gadget they are trying to hawk.
I would love for this to work. I want to believe, trust me. But do you really think this is the way it's going to happen? Do you really think someone who manages to break the law of thermodynamics is going to be so dumb as to not really know what he has and what it means and just stick it in a little car and try and sell it that way?
The law of thermodynamics is not called a law lightly. It's not because we've never found a way to break it. It's because we don't know of a way where it could be broken that wouldn't lead to a universe that is in any way like the one we live in. It's called a law because we cannot even conceive a way for it not to be. I am certainly not going to sit around here and bandy about techspeak babble on how it might be possible to break it, which is what the poster I replied to was chastising us for not doing. Anyone capable of breaking the law of thermodynamics certainly won't need my help explaining it. And if they want to induce belief, stuffing it in the boot of a car and selling it like the rest of the snake oil vendors is certainly not the way to generate credibility.
This is not insightful. We are not required to clap our hands for joy and try and come up with a bunch of pseudo-scientific reasons why something should work because some fringe company out to fleece stupid venture capitalists has come up with yet another scheme to show how the laws of physics do apply, but just not to them. So while I'm sorry your high school teacher scarred you for life by trying to explain high school math in terms that most high school students would understand, that is in no way relevant to the hard, fast, plain, unfortunate truth that you cannot get energy for nothing. Stop berating the rest of the slashdot universe, who know this fact, for not going all doe-eyed at this silly new car. This is simply an energy storage system, or there is a reaction going on that consumes products (other than water I should point out).
Now please go back to watching Star Trek and going to conventions where you and all your buddies can come up with techspeak to your hearts content to explain how warp engines work.
The standard was ratified, at which point the ISO was obligated to publish within 30 days. A deadline they missed, which is one of the reasons that several of the appeals actually cited as to why they were appealing. The ISO not publishing the text by the given deadline is not a conspiracy theory - it's a fact and a matter of record. I would encourage you to read the published appeals.
which is not the same as that ratified as a standard by the ISO, due to changes effected during the ratification process
What is the version ratified by the ISO? They never published it - no one has ever seen it. One wonders if the ISO even knows what was ratified by the ISO. I suspect they were relieved at the appeals - it gave them an excuse to keep on without publishing.
You're obviously not getting my point. Perhaps I was just too obtuse, but... well, I just couldn't resist that last dig.:)
Sure the applications will be running on (OS-du-jour), tucked inside what nowadays might be layers of VM abstractions, but my point is when the hypervisor OS itself is Linux, you can hardly discount the importance of that OS. Like any good OS, especially on a mainframe, it's transparent and the end user never sees it, or cares - a measure of how good it is is how invisible it is. Ultimately, though, no matter what virtualization is going on, the application is still running on a Linux box.
So you're right, I honestly don't know what OS the financial biggies use on the mainframes. What I do know is all your applications are belong to us.:)
And Linux will never replace mainframes. Nothing will.
Excuse me? A lot of new mainframes being shipped are with Linux. Most of IBM's supercomputers now use Linux, and this trickles down into to mainframe market as yesterday's supercomputer designs scale into today's mainframes. Linux isn't replacing the mainframe - Linux IS the mainframe.
Even if you don't live in the US donating is a good idea. Before I joined the Canadian Forces, I made several donations to the EFF. American law, as the recently proposed copyright law here shows, tends to lead to extreme pressure on Canada to "conform to international (read American) standards". If the nastiness can be confined at the source, it has less chance of making it North. Pull the teeth on the American laws before they spread.
A good thing it takes 15 million computers too, because some suspected known data like, say, your bank balance would be in for a world of hurt if encryption were as easy to crack today as Enigma was.
Then it can't be extortion, because there is no threat. You can't say to someone do something illegal or we will bring you up on charges. It's nonsensical on its face.
Ease and accuracy of counting is one reason to e-vote. In Canada in the last election, we had a system more akin to an electronic counter. We voted on paper ballots with a black marker and the ballot was then fed into a scanner that empties into a lockbox if the scanner reads properly. In case of any recount, it is done by hand with the real paper ballot that people actually wrote on. A certain random selection of voting stations are chosen for manual counts anyway to ensure it matches what the electronic counts are.
Unless you want to add environmental concerns to the equation, I can't think of a better system. Fast, efficient, and verifiable.
I hope he's careful picking a running mate. He might have won the primary, but if he picks Clinton as running mate and wins the election, I guarantee that before the next election she'll still end up being president.
I wasn't implying open source is worse than commercial, I was pointing out that telling us one could already do it with a Mac just wasn't newsworthy.
Which reminds me... there's a joke in the Canadian Forces in basic officer training. How do you tell when someone in the platoon is a pilot? You just wait a few seconds... he'll tell you.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask the families of the 50 people taken hostage by real pirates off Somali waters the other day how funny talk like a pirate day is. The caricature of pirates in the general public as comical is one thing (albeit of many) that hinders getting world support to eradicate piracy. Piracy is real, it is rampant, and it is deadly. Put it in this light. How socially acceptable would it be to have a "talk like a mugger" day... a "talk like a murderer" day, or maybe to round it off, a "talk like a terrorist" day?
Does kopete work on Windows? If it doesn't then I don't think it passes the cross-platform requirement.
This is the way they can get .xxx, .g0ats3ks and .anythingelse without coming out and, as an organization, "supporting" it. Plus, they get a truck load of money doing it. So, basically they have turned into equivocating greedy bastards like anyone else.
Sorry, pasted the wrong thing. The BBC article I referenced is here.
The problem I have is with the dispute resolution system. According to Paul Twomey of ICANN (as quoted by the BBC), "[i]f there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder."
So, I pick a name, and McDeepPockets comes along and thinks, hey, that's a great idea - I'll just take that, thank-you. They "dispute" it, and ICANN's response is... well, if you really can't settle your differences, high bidder gets it. Wow... that's going to make for a pretty mercenary internet.
Studies confirm that studies confirming something everyone already knows tend to be highlighted on Slashdot more than other studies.
Maybe this would have been better:
:)
Adbay ecausebay Iday aysay itday isday and Adbay ecausebay itday isday eallyray adbay
Is child pornography victimless? This is something I have a hard time accepting. Which likely stems from my belief that sexual contact with children is wrong. And there are some who might consider there to always be at least one victim of child pornography, just as there is always at least one with drug abuse. Many psychological addictions are accepted behavioural disorders. I for one am not going to wave my arms in the air and tell another country they are wrong to want to protect their citizens from that - as long as a significant enough majority go along with it.
I don't think it's flawed idea on its face that a society would want to censor child pornography. Our own society has many many forms of censorship which are well accepted. Censorship of libellous writing and hate speech. Censorship due to copyright and patent law. Censorship due to privacy constraints and censorship incidental to legal actions. Most people believe censorship in general to be wrong, but believe that there are times when it's necessary. When the harm inherent in the content spreading outweighs the harm of censorship. Censorship is dangerous, but I really hate it when that word shows up here and everyone jumps on it like its a plague. Oh my heavens - they're trying to censor us, break out the pitchforks. What I'm trying to do, clumsily perhaps, is point out that maybe the method they are using in France is actually a good way to implement it. A method of censorship that varies in effectiveness with the amount of support it has from the population involved. If the people don't want it, I think it just won't work. If they really all do get on board with it, then as far as I'm concerned, good for them for finding a community solution and working together.
I spoke of sexuality, not pregnancy. There are many many forms of sexuality that involve no risk of pregnancy. Really, though, that was just an example. One I chose because it was in the same genre as the pornography laws they set up. There are many other examples of things that are malum prohibitum, but let me back up and be more generic. This particular implementation seems to me to be one that would only work if it is has the support of the public. I don't see much difference between this and taxes, or getting a marriage license, or any other myriad of things that must be done or not done not because there is something inherently wrong involved, but because the society has, for its own reasons, decided to regulate or proscribe those actions. Or maybe they believe there is something wrong with it. The point is, if a group of people decide that certain types of pornography are wrong and they decide that the dangers associated with it are more than the dangers associated with censorship, then who are we to say they are bad to do it?
Do you think there is an absolute moral right and wrong? Do you believe in God? If so, then I'd suggest most religions would agree that pornography is bad, and we get the same result. However you roll it, you have either one of two things. Either A) the majority of people in France believe that certain pornography is bad, and they want to work together to eliminate it from their networks, which if enough of a majority work together might work or B) the majority of people don't feel that way, and any technical method involving the solicitation of public support for eliminating it will be so ineffectual as to not be worth worrying about. In either case, who are we on the outside to say it's wrong? Who are we to deny them the right to decide right and wrong for themselves?
If the French people are on board with this, and they find a way to make it work, then who are we to say it's censorship and bad? Why is incest illegal? Why don't we introduce children to sexuality? In the strictest sense, these things are malum prohibitum, not malum in se. If sexuality is good, then why forbid it between family members or children? We do that because these are things that, as a society, we believe to be wrong. And because we feel that allowing them would open the door to abuse, making the dangers of those behaviours outweigh their potential good.
If the people of France feel that the dangers inherent in certain pornography outweigh their good, then who are we to say out of hand this is a bad thing? I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work. Sure you'll have people who will be able to circumvent it, but I don't see this as a system they are intending to be safe from circumvention. Just a national net-nanny system. If that's what they want, then I say we apply the live and let live to them as a group and say great - more power to you.
If this was an instance of the violation of the law of thermodynamics, it wouldn't have been introduced to the world as a new car. It would have been heralded as the wondrous piece of science it would have been. It would turn science on its ear and literally change everything we think we know. You'll forgive my incredible scepticism when someone comes around with a scheme to break that law in the form of a gadget they are trying to hawk.
I would love for this to work. I want to believe, trust me. But do you really think this is the way it's going to happen? Do you really think someone who manages to break the law of thermodynamics is going to be so dumb as to not really know what he has and what it means and just stick it in a little car and try and sell it that way?
The law of thermodynamics is not called a law lightly. It's not because we've never found a way to break it. It's because we don't know of a way where it could be broken that wouldn't lead to a universe that is in any way like the one we live in. It's called a law because we cannot even conceive a way for it not to be. I am certainly not going to sit around here and bandy about techspeak babble on how it might be possible to break it, which is what the poster I replied to was chastising us for not doing. Anyone capable of breaking the law of thermodynamics certainly won't need my help explaining it. And if they want to induce belief, stuffing it in the boot of a car and selling it like the rest of the snake oil vendors is certainly not the way to generate credibility.
This is not insightful. We are not required to clap our hands for joy and try and come up with a bunch of pseudo-scientific reasons why something should work because some fringe company out to fleece stupid venture capitalists has come up with yet another scheme to show how the laws of physics do apply, but just not to them. So while I'm sorry your high school teacher scarred you for life by trying to explain high school math in terms that most high school students would understand, that is in no way relevant to the hard, fast, plain, unfortunate truth that you cannot get energy for nothing. Stop berating the rest of the slashdot universe, who know this fact, for not going all doe-eyed at this silly new car. This is simply an energy storage system, or there is a reaction going on that consumes products (other than water I should point out).
Now please go back to watching Star Trek and going to conventions where you and all your buddies can come up with techspeak to your hearts content to explain how warp engines work.
The standard was ratified, at which point the ISO was obligated to publish within 30 days. A deadline they missed, which is one of the reasons that several of the appeals actually cited as to why they were appealing. The ISO not publishing the text by the given deadline is not a conspiracy theory - it's a fact and a matter of record. I would encourage you to read the published appeals.
You're obviously not getting my point. Perhaps I was just too obtuse, but... well, I just couldn't resist that last dig. :)
:)
Sure the applications will be running on (OS-du-jour), tucked inside what nowadays might be layers of VM abstractions, but my point is when the hypervisor OS itself is Linux, you can hardly discount the importance of that OS. Like any good OS, especially on a mainframe, it's transparent and the end user never sees it, or cares - a measure of how good it is is how invisible it is. Ultimately, though, no matter what virtualization is going on, the application is still running on a Linux box.
So you're right, I honestly don't know what OS the financial biggies use on the mainframes. What I do know is all your applications are belong to us.
Q. How many applications that run on the [Linux] mainframes of large financial corporations are being replaced by applications that run on Linux?
A. Ummmm.... all of them?
Is this a trick question?
Even if you don't live in the US donating is a good idea. Before I joined the Canadian Forces, I made several donations to the EFF. American law, as the recently proposed copyright law here shows, tends to lead to extreme pressure on Canada to "conform to international (read American) standards". If the nastiness can be confined at the source, it has less chance of making it North. Pull the teeth on the American laws before they spread.
A good thing it takes 15 million computers too, because some suspected known data like, say, your bank balance would be in for a world of hurt if encryption were as easy to crack today as Enigma was.
Then it can't be extortion, because there is no threat. You can't say to someone do something illegal or we will bring you up on charges. It's nonsensical on its face.
Ease and accuracy of counting is one reason to e-vote. In Canada in the last election, we had a system more akin to an electronic counter. We voted on paper ballots with a black marker and the ballot was then fed into a scanner that empties into a lockbox if the scanner reads properly. In case of any recount, it is done by hand with the real paper ballot that people actually wrote on. A certain random selection of voting stations are chosen for manual counts anyway to ensure it matches what the electronic counts are.
Unless you want to add environmental concerns to the equation, I can't think of a better system. Fast, efficient, and verifiable.
What do you think anti-virus companies do?
I hope he's careful picking a running mate. He might have won the primary, but if he picks Clinton as running mate and wins the election, I guarantee that before the next election she'll still end up being president.
I wasn't implying open source is worse than commercial, I was pointing out that telling us one could already do it with a Mac just wasn't newsworthy.
Which reminds me... there's a joke in the Canadian Forces in basic officer training. How do you tell when someone in the platoon is a pilot? You just wait a few seconds... he'll tell you.
As soon as all of OS/X is open source, this will be news.