I work for one of the busiest and most popular kids' sites on the Internet. We use all Linux for our servers, and we don't have any external support; we do everything in-house and get around 250 million page views a day.
I'm sure there's a lot of stuffy old companies which fearfully insist on external support contracts, but they aren't necessary.
The factual basis seems much more sound than the Swift Boat Liars.
My favorite part of the whole Swift Boat thing is this:
Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Bush stayed in Texas.
Maybe Kerry sucked while he was on his tour, but at least he had one. How can Bush be considered "more fit for command" of the U.S. Armed Forces, when he (at least, before his first term) had less experience with them than Kerry, and no combat experience?
Generic political disclaimer: No, I don't think that Kerry's combat experience means he necessarily is a better candidate, or that Bush's lack of combat service means he's a crappy one. (I overall liked Clinton, after all, and he never served.) This is just one facet of each man's overall profile that helps me make my decision.
Well, here's a data point against it: I played FF1, FF2, and FF3 long before FF7 came out (those are all the American designations, btw), and FF7 is still my favorite.:)
You're conflating terms: When the grandparent said "Creativity is not a finite resource," he meant that information is not a finite resource: it can be duplicated at a cost too small to measure. He did not mean that all people are infinitely creative nor capable of producing equal quality of work.
But I'm sure there's no way you could have figured that out on your own.
Wong, one of the original authors of SPF and a co-author of SID, says that it was never intended to combat all spam. Weng, another researcher in the space, says that this is just one of the many pieces of the puzzle needed to combat spam.
Wung, on the other hand, claims that a variation of SPF will eventually win the day, while Wing, yet another researcher, believes that any acronym that can be confused with sunscreen will inevitably fail. And someone named "Wang" would like you to know that you can increase your penis size by 20% in just 2 hours!
...why not just reduce its duration rather significantly?
While this is the proper solution (or at least one version of it), it won't happen because you'll never get the big media interests to discuss it publicly. Try to engage them in a public forum of any kind, and get them to explain why copyrights need to last forever, and they'll ignore you, refuse to respond, change the subject, or respond with non-sequiturs. Here's how it might go:
Illissius: Explain why copyrights need to last 90 years.
RIAA (for example): We have to protect the rights of artists to profit from their work.
Illissius: But they can profit on a much shorter timescale than 90 years. And making copyright shorter will encourage more creativity, since people won't be able to just create one thing and then rest on their laurels for years on end.
RIAA: Well we have to prevent piracy, which takes away huge amounts of money from these poor starving artists.
Illissius: What? That doesn't make sense! You didn't even answer my--
RIAA: Sorry, we have to go.
* RIAA runs off and continues bribi^H^H^H^H^Hgiving campaign contributions to lawmakers.
No, I did not include the RIAA in 'everyone', as while they technically are most unfortunately a part of it, statistically they are an entirely insignificant portion (there's like, a single to double digit number of executives, and maybe a few hundred employees?).
Logically, you're right; it's not a good solution for them, but it is for everyone else. However the RIAA has something that the rest of us don't:
1) Billions of dollars to spend on lobbying lawmakers;
2) Employees (lobbyists) with long experience convincing those lawmakers to do bad things.
As much as we here on/. (and other fora) bitch about it, unless we put together a concerted, organized, directed, and above all well-funded effort to convince lawmakers otherwise, we're screwed.
It's a bleak picture, but not hopeless. In the long run I think the RIAA will eventually lose, namely because all the laws they create will not stem the tide of casual piracy, eventually things will come to a head, and all the money in the world can't buy off fifty million pissed-off Joe Sixpacks who just want to download free music.
But when Congress makes a stupid law, and the law will never be repealed because special interests spend so much money keeping congresspersons in their pockets, our only real alternative is to have "activist judges" abort those stupid laws. (Or a violent revolution; take your pick.)
Maybe they "go above their mandate," but Congress's implied mandate is to make laws for the good of all the people, not for the good of a handful of corporations and their shareholders. If Congress isn't going to play fair, why should the courts?
Manned space flight is about ego and politics, not science.
Partially true, though misleading; science has certainly benefited from manned space flight to a nonnegligible degree.
Right now we have a lot more pressing issues in this country that money could be spent on than toy plane pipedreams.
Right now we have a lot more pressing issues in this country that money could be spent on than [movies|sports|music|entertainment|basic scientific research|you can put anything in here]. An efficiently-run space program would be a huge boon, even if there are plenty of "more pressing issues."
Essentially, just because there are more pressing issues does not mean we should abandon the less pressing issues. It's like telling the police department that they should ignore minor traffic violations because there are people being murdered out there!
Like most other government programs, the Space Shuttle is many hundreds of times over budget.
What do you mean by "over budget"? They were budgeted X but took more? Their budget is higher than is really necessary? Anyway, your pointless exaggeration just makes you look dumb. "Hundreds of times" over budget? You really think a directed, manned spaceflight program (not "getting a guy into orbit for 10 minutes", an actual program) can be had for $160 million a year? Get real.
Yes, I agree that the shuttle should be retired and a new, efficient, non-politicized program be put in its place (I'd also like a pony, while we're at it), but let's watch our blathering rhetoric, here.
Virtually everyone who uses the word "virii" uses it because they misapplied the radius -> radii rule. Thus not admonishing people for using the word "virii" increases the general acceptance of misapplying language rules in ignorant or confusing ways.
Now I understand that languages change; but saying "virii" instead of "viruses" is a STUPID change, and I want it to stop. I'm perfectly willing to let good changes come along (like being able to use "they" as the third-person non-gender-specific singular), but I'm going to do my damnedest to put a stop to "virii."
To everyone who says "virii": You sound like an uneducated rube. It's "viruses," not "virii." Cut it out.
Yes, languages change, and I have just as much right to try to stop people from changing the language as they do to try to change it. We'll see who wins.
Han murders Greedo. (or whatever his name is) because he doesn't want to go back to Jabba.
Um, Greedo was pointing a gun at Han. If someone's pointing a gun at me, and is ambiguously threatening to either take me to a crime boss that I owe money, and/or kill me on the spot, it's hardly "murder" to pull first and shoot the guy. Han was acting in self-defense. Even if he did legitimately owe the money to Jabba (after all, he did dump Jabba's spice), he was in imminent mortal danger from Greedo.
Shooting someone who is pointing a gun at you is not so obviously murder. Nonetheless, there IS still a distinction in Han's character if he shoots first -- but the part about the change that really pisses me off is the fact that NOBODY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WOULD MISS AT THAT RANGE. Not even Greedo. Not even fucking Jar-Jar would miss at that range. It's not the change in character that bothers me nearly as much as the fact that it's just fucking stupid.
I'm writing a letter with pen and paper (okay, laserjet and paper) to Lucasfilm, stating that I will not buy the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD unless it includes the original theatrical version.
I've got four copies of the original trilogy, two original (one widescreen, one pan-'n'-scan) and two special edition (one widescreen, one pan-'n'-scan). That's quite enough. The only reason I'd want them on DVD is so that they don't degrade as fast as the VHS copies are.
I'm no longer interested in Lucas's further changes to the trilogy. (You could say I'm no longer as serious a fan as I was back when the special edition came out. Growing up, getting married, and having a kid will do that to you.) The only thing I will pay for is the original trilogy on DVD, in its original, theatrical format.
He didn't say that airliners could do all that, perfectly and without fail, he just said they COULD do it. It's as if I said, "People can drive cars from one destination to another," and you replied, "I beg to differ. People can get in accidents, sometimes for unexpected reasons."
If the tool still does the thing you bought it to do, it's not obsolete.
No, obsolete means:
1. No longer in use: an obsolete word.
2. Outmoded in design, style, or construction: an obsolete locomotive.
The original iPods are obsolete in the second sense -- outmoded in construction (specifically, their smaller capacity). If a tool doesn't do the thing you bought it to do, it's broken, not obsolete.
The Internet itself will die soon for a variety of reasons (spam, peak oil, Super bugs, the Apocalypse). Just don't be disappointed when it happens.
The problem with predictions like this is that you can never be proved wrong -- even if it's been 10, 20, 50, 100 years, you can always say, "Just because the Internet hasn't died yet, doesn't mean I was wrong! It'll die soon, any day now, really!"
I think I'll save your prediction and look you up in 10 years (which I think would extend well enough past your usage of "soon"), when the Internet's still around, and say, "Looks like you were wrong, asshole!"
Ah, that makes sense. I (incorrectly) assumed that all profits would end up being paid to shareholders as a dividend, but obviously even a publicly held corporation doesn't have to do this if the board doesn't decide to do so.
Presumably these profits would normally be taxed, except the corporations are good at making use of tax shelters in order to defer tax on the profit long enough that they essentially never pay tax on it.
I was under the impression that a corporation, as an entity, doesn't pay income tax because all of their income is given out again as either pay to its employees (which is taxed), or as dividends to shareholders (which are taxed), or is used for business expenses (paying for equipment/supplies/rent), and is thus tax-deductible (as, presumably, it should be). So I don't quite understand why a company would be paying tax on its income separately from the tax that is already taken on that income, when it's given as income to employees and shareholders. Am I missing something?
The common argument I keep seeing in this thread is that this ruling is justified because the majority of uses for this item are illegal, and in general, if the majority of uses for any given device are illegal, then it's okay to make that device illegal.
Why? Why is that the case? Why because something is mostly used for illegal purposes is it therefore okay to make it illegal? What about those people who do use it for legitimate purposes? What is the arbitrary percentage of uses that are illegal before it's okay to make a device illegal? 90%? 99%? 99.9%?
I'm assuming that the reasoning goes, "When the overwhelming majority of uses for a device are illegal, then the overall harm to society by restricting the rights of the legitimate users is less than the overall harm to society of leaving the device legal." The problems with this are the aforementioned boundary problem (what percentage constitutes "overwhelming majority"), and the possibility that the above statement is not true for any percentage below 100% (since making it okay to outlaw certain devices sets a bad precedent for outlawing things that simply enough people don't like -- i.e. starting a slippery slope from 99.9999% down to 99%, 90%, and 50% + 1). The loss of freedom in order to "prevent" crimes (insofar as that ever actually happens, which is endlessly debatable) is not trivially justified.
Uh, claiming that it's "bloody obvious" doesn't prove that it's true. You want to try providing some actual evidence that the CIA (or some other "alphabet soup agency") is specifically behind this? Claiming that they have done bad things in the past doesn't prove that they did this thing; you need actual hard evidence linking them to this.
Not that I really have much love for the CIA or FBI or NSA or DHS, but give me a break.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for one of the busiest and most popular kids' sites on the Internet. We use all Linux for our servers, and we don't have any external support; we do everything in-house and get around 250 million page views a day.
I'm sure there's a lot of stuffy old companies which fearfully insist on external support contracts, but they aren't necessary.
But seriously, 1998 called and it wants its "Death of the Floppy Disk" story back. Jesus.
(I'll head off the obvious response now: "2001 called, it wants its joke back." Thank you, I'm here all week.)
Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Bush stayed in Texas.
Maybe Kerry sucked while he was on his tour, but at least he had one. How can Bush be considered "more fit for command" of the U.S. Armed Forces, when he (at least, before his first term) had less experience with them than Kerry, and no combat experience?
Generic political disclaimer: No, I don't think that Kerry's combat experience means he necessarily is a better candidate, or that Bush's lack of combat service means he's a crappy one. (I overall liked Clinton, after all, and he never served.) This is just one facet of each man's overall profile that helps me make my decision.
Well, here's a data point against it: I played FF1, FF2, and FF3 long before FF7 came out (those are all the American designations, btw), and FF7 is still my favorite. :)
Some kind of Genesis device? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
You're conflating terms: When the grandparent said "Creativity is not a finite resource," he meant that information is not a finite resource: it can be duplicated at a cost too small to measure. He did not mean that all people are infinitely creative nor capable of producing equal quality of work.
But I'm sure there's no way you could have figured that out on your own.
Illissius: Explain why copyrights need to last 90 years.
RIAA (for example): We have to protect the rights of artists to profit from their work.
Illissius: But they can profit on a much shorter timescale than 90 years. And making copyright shorter will encourage more creativity, since people won't be able to just create one thing and then rest on their laurels for years on end.
RIAA: Well we have to prevent piracy, which takes away huge amounts of money from these poor starving artists.
Illissius: What? That doesn't make sense! You didn't even answer my--
RIAA: Sorry, we have to go.
* RIAA runs off and continues bribi^H^H^H^H^Hgiving campaign contributions to lawmakers.
Logically, you're right; it's not a good solution for them, but it is for everyone else. However the RIAA has something that the rest of us don't:1) Billions of dollars to spend on lobbying lawmakers;
2) Employees (lobbyists) with long experience convincing those lawmakers to do bad things.
As much as we here on /. (and other fora) bitch about it, unless we put together a concerted, organized, directed, and above all well-funded effort to convince lawmakers otherwise, we're screwed.
It's a bleak picture, but not hopeless. In the long run I think the RIAA will eventually lose, namely because all the laws they create will not stem the tide of casual piracy, eventually things will come to a head, and all the money in the world can't buy off fifty million pissed-off Joe Sixpacks who just want to download free music.
But when Congress makes a stupid law, and the law will never be repealed because special interests spend so much money keeping congresspersons in their pockets, our only real alternative is to have "activist judges" abort those stupid laws. (Or a violent revolution; take your pick.)
Maybe they "go above their mandate," but Congress's implied mandate is to make laws for the good of all the people, not for the good of a handful of corporations and their shareholders. If Congress isn't going to play fair, why should the courts?
I'd say Ballmer's on something, and it definitely ain't Linux.
Essentially, just because there are more pressing issues does not mean we should abandon the less pressing issues. It's like telling the police department that they should ignore minor traffic violations because there are people being murdered out there!
What do you mean by "over budget"? They were budgeted X but took more? Their budget is higher than is really necessary? Anyway, your pointless exaggeration just makes you look dumb. "Hundreds of times" over budget? You really think a directed, manned spaceflight program (not "getting a guy into orbit for 10 minutes", an actual program) can be had for $160 million a year? Get real.Yes, I agree that the shuttle should be retired and a new, efficient, non-politicized program be put in its place (I'd also like a pony, while we're at it), but let's watch our blathering rhetoric, here.
Virtually everyone who uses the word "virii" uses it because they misapplied the radius -> radii rule. Thus not admonishing people for using the word "virii" increases the general acceptance of misapplying language rules in ignorant or confusing ways.
Now I understand that languages change; but saying "virii" instead of "viruses" is a STUPID change, and I want it to stop. I'm perfectly willing to let good changes come along (like being able to use "they" as the third-person non-gender-specific singular), but I'm going to do my damnedest to put a stop to "virii."
To everyone who says "virii": You sound like an uneducated rube. It's "viruses," not "virii." Cut it out.
Yes, languages change, and I have just as much right to try to stop people from changing the language as they do to try to change it. We'll see who wins.
...if I get any more spam from MartianBuddy.com, I'm going to unleash Hell!
Shooting someone who is pointing a gun at you is not so obviously murder. Nonetheless, there IS still a distinction in Han's character if he shoots first -- but the part about the change that really pisses me off is the fact that NOBODY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WOULD MISS AT THAT RANGE. Not even Greedo. Not even fucking Jar-Jar would miss at that range. It's not the change in character that bothers me nearly as much as the fact that it's just fucking stupid.
I'm writing a letter with pen and paper (okay, laserjet and paper) to Lucasfilm, stating that I will not buy the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD unless it includes the original theatrical version.
I've got four copies of the original trilogy, two original (one widescreen, one pan-'n'-scan) and two special edition (one widescreen, one pan-'n'-scan). That's quite enough. The only reason I'd want them on DVD is so that they don't degrade as fast as the VHS copies are.
I'm no longer interested in Lucas's further changes to the trilogy. (You could say I'm no longer as serious a fan as I was back when the special edition came out. Growing up, getting married, and having a kid will do that to you.) The only thing I will pay for is the original trilogy on DVD, in its original, theatrical format.
He didn't say that airliners could do all that, perfectly and without fail, he just said they COULD do it. It's as if I said, "People can drive cars from one destination to another," and you replied, "I beg to differ. People can get in accidents, sometimes for unexpected reasons."
Yeah, it's a nitpick, but so what?
1. No longer in use: an obsolete word.
2. Outmoded in design, style, or construction: an obsolete locomotive.
The original iPods are obsolete in the second sense -- outmoded in construction (specifically, their smaller capacity). If a tool doesn't do the thing you bought it to do, it's broken, not obsolete.
I think I'll save your prediction and look you up in 10 years (which I think would extend well enough past your usage of "soon"), when the Internet's still around, and say, "Looks like you were wrong, asshole!"
Ah, that makes sense. I (incorrectly) assumed that all profits would end up being paid to shareholders as a dividend, but obviously even a publicly held corporation doesn't have to do this if the board doesn't decide to do so.
Presumably these profits would normally be taxed, except the corporations are good at making use of tax shelters in order to defer tax on the profit long enough that they essentially never pay tax on it.
I was under the impression that a corporation, as an entity, doesn't pay income tax because all of their income is given out again as either pay to its employees (which is taxed), or as dividends to shareholders (which are taxed), or is used for business expenses (paying for equipment/supplies/rent), and is thus tax-deductible (as, presumably, it should be). So I don't quite understand why a company would be paying tax on its income separately from the tax that is already taken on that income, when it's given as income to employees and shareholders. Am I missing something?
The common argument I keep seeing in this thread is that this ruling is justified because the majority of uses for this item are illegal, and in general, if the majority of uses for any given device are illegal, then it's okay to make that device illegal.
Why? Why is that the case? Why because something is mostly used for illegal purposes is it therefore okay to make it illegal? What about those people who do use it for legitimate purposes? What is the arbitrary percentage of uses that are illegal before it's okay to make a device illegal? 90%? 99%? 99.9%?
I'm assuming that the reasoning goes, "When the overwhelming majority of uses for a device are illegal, then the overall harm to society by restricting the rights of the legitimate users is less than the overall harm to society of leaving the device legal." The problems with this are the aforementioned boundary problem (what percentage constitutes "overwhelming majority"), and the possibility that the above statement is not true for any percentage below 100% (since making it okay to outlaw certain devices sets a bad precedent for outlawing things that simply enough people don't like -- i.e. starting a slippery slope from 99.9999% down to 99%, 90%, and 50% + 1). The loss of freedom in order to "prevent" crimes (insofar as that ever actually happens, which is endlessly debatable) is not trivially justified.
Uh, claiming that it's "bloody obvious" doesn't prove that it's true. You want to try providing some actual evidence that the CIA (or some other "alphabet soup agency") is specifically behind this? Claiming that they have done bad things in the past doesn't prove that they did this thing; you need actual hard evidence linking them to this.
Not that I really have much love for the CIA or FBI or NSA or DHS, but give me a break.