I won't use the term 'Imperial' because it's completely inaccurate, as well as misleading. The traditional system of measurement in the US is a sibling to the 'Imperial' system in the UK, but it's not the same thing. A UK pint is considerably more than a US pint, for instance, a fact which is very convenient when one is fortunate enough to be drinking your Guinness by the former.
I don't like to call SI 'metric' either since that is also inaccurate and misleading. Any unit of measure is a metric. All three systems, traditional US, 'Imperial', and SI are metric systems. Unfortunately, the SI is actually a subset of another metric system, which doesn't seem to have any other proper name available, but probably *should* be called 'Imperial' as it was spread by the French Empire. But I digress...
You *can* certainly make any system work for you, if you're used to it. However traditional US measures *are* more practical in many everyday uses, even though that doesn't mean that SI units can't be used - they're just more cumbersome.
For example, division is a common task. Traditional units of measure are extremely flexible in this regard. With SI, on the other hand, many divisors are problematic. What's a third of a metre? It's an infinitely repeating decimal fraction that can only be approximated, and even the approximation is relatively cumbersome. A third of a yard is exactly one foot. What's a twelfth of a litre? Another infinitely repeating decimal fraction. A twelth of a quart is precisely 16 teaspoons, or two ounces and two teaspoons, or one third of a cup. I would expect that a site which caters to computing enthusiasts would have more people that appreciate the limitations of base ten and the advantages of other bases. Computing is built around powers of two... binary, octal, and hexidecimal primarily. Similarly, the traditional system is built around a combination of binary and trinary multiplications, which gives one far more flexibility than a rigid base ten can. And before you reply that those are unusual cases, consider that they aren't *all* that unusual, and on the other side ANY operation that is easy in SI is also easy with traditional measures.
The units themeselves may be expected to be more useful in many situations, as they *evolved* in response to needs, rather than being Cartesian abstractions conjured from thin air, but I realise this point may be rather hard to prove. But I don't think it's any accident that the most commonly used SI units are very nearly equivelant to traditional measures - the metre itself is just a slightly overlong yard, and the litre of course is very close to a quart.
In regard to temperature, it's been shown that one degree fahrenheit is a very close approximation of the minimal change in temperature a human can typically perceive. In comparison, a centigrade or celsius degree seems overly large - you can go from one room to another, noticeably hotter or cooler, yet the temperature is officially still the same.
Finally, notice that even the SI proponents recognised the impracticality of an all-decimal system, at least in regards to measures of time, or measures of angle. We still use the sexigesimal system that goes all the way back to Sumer for those, in SI as well as traditionally. And this is for good reason - just like the other traditional measures, this is a system built around a mixed base system, using both two and three, and consequently allowing a far greater range of division without becoming cumbersome. A third of the way around the circle is 120 degrees, a third of the way through the hour is 20 minutes. Can you imagine trying to divide a decimal hour, or a decimal circle, into three equal parts? Or six, or nine, or twelve, or..?
I've done that. Your "impartial scientists" turn out to be just as much religious nutjobs as the creationists and intelligent design proponents. Their religion is just more politically correct.
Here's a tip - having a 'sciency' job title doesn't make one a scientist. Understanding of, and unswerving devotion to, the scientific method, the dialectic between empirical data and logic, is what makes one a scientist.
Indeed. It is pretty firmly established that there is a warming trend on, which is the literal meaning of 'global warming' but 'Global Warming' in the context of this movie drags in several tons of extra baggage which is nowhere near so well supported. But Frosty Hardison is just being a 'useful idiot' here with his nonsensical blatherings.
Yahoo decided awhile back to remove POP access from free accounts. You now have to pay them for that access. While gmail gives it to you for free, then makes the web interface useful to you so you won't want to...
I am using just noscript. Blocking scripts from yimg.com gets rid of the ads with no freeze-ups. It also, if memory serves, interfered with some function somewhere in mail, although the basics still seem to work. I normally let their ads run, as they aren't very intrusive. Then again I also use gmail for almost everything, and rarely login on yahoo anymore.
The problem is there's no actual competition for customers who own their own phones. The companies are so used to inflated profit margins they draw from those they can talk into long term contracts with all the useless frills, people that just want phone service at a decent price aren't even on their radar.
When I saw this article I immediately thought: what kind of flaming MORON would pledge money to support drivers for Nvidious instead of open hardware? Not to mention the nueveau folks are on record they didn't ask for and don't need the money anyhow.
In addition to the links the previous two posters have given you, try system76.com. There are others. I personally would rather do business with a company that will ship a box with linux on it rather than buy from dell and then spend hours getting a refund, and I think it sends a better message, but either way, don't use Windows and don't pay for Windows.
Nonetheless, he also appears to express astonishment, dismay... the comment about what century we're in betrays him. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a text interfaces, in fact quite the contrary.
No, this is not true. The FCC regulations in question apply to the operators of the devices, not the manufacturers. Look at all the wireless devices that *do* have free drivers - they aren't illegal. If you edit the driver code to do something illegal with them, of course, you could get in trouble for that.
With a decent theme GNUStep is a heck of a lot better looking than OS X, let alone the other contenders. Most importantly, the visual elements are functional, because, you know, most of us use our computers to get something done, rather than just staring at it all day.
Any documents in a court case can be sealed from the general public on request of the parties, to avoid revealing trade secrets, embarrasing stuff, and so on. Then a redacted form of the document is normally made available, minus whatever they don't want you to see.
If it's illegal, the world wide web as a whole is illegal.
And your analogy is simply not analogous.
No one broke into the plaintiffs site. The defendant did not copy any copyrighted material from the plaintiffs site. He simply published the *location* of the material in question. When someone clicked on the link on the defendants site, their browser would then send a *request* to the plaintiffs server, which then copied the material and transmitted it in response.
Plaintiff had the option to configure their server NOT to make a copy and send it in such situations, but to return a 'Forbidden' error message instead, if they did not wish to allow this. As it was their server, whose configuration was entirely in their control, any copying done was done by them.
This is a very poor decision. From what I can see, it can probably be ascribed to the very poor defense mounted by the defendant. However, a 'justice system' that perpetrates injustice simply because one party is unable to retain a high powered law firm to defend them is a big problem. The US system at this point in time seems to have a lot more to do with guaranteeing income for lawyers than serving justice.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Now Novell and MS tried to get around this by granting patent licenses, not to each other, but to each others customers. Depending on how a court of competent authority rules, it's either a transparent dodge and Novell no longer has any right to distribute GPL software, or the dodge works, in which case Novell's customers have lost their license as a consequence of this action. It's also quite possible that by attempting to strip their customers of their licenses, Novell could be ruled to be in violation here, even if the dodge is found valid at the first level of analysis. Furthermore, no one wants to go to court over this, because there's so much room for argument and maneuvre, and because one possible consequence of doing so would be to harm innocent third-parties who did nothing wrong.
It's a mess, and it's clear that some very smart lawyers worked very hard to make it that way.
No, Jeremy wasn't the only one working on Samba, not even close. Like most important projects, it involves a lot of people. Novell employing JA did give them an advantageous relationship with it, but not control or ownership. And no, Linux was developed and used for many years before the big companies got involved. They got involved because it was already better than what they had, and even if they all turned their backs and walked away tommorrow it would continue to be developed and used without pause.
There is no chance of that, however. For it to become 'better' than the others, they would need good relations with the community that produces the software, that's the point. The better their relations are with the community, the better the community supports them, the more likely the community is to be responsive to their needs, and so forth. If you alienate the community, they don't care what you need anymore. That's the place Novell has put itself.
Think about Samba, or instance. When Novell had good standing in the community, they had Jeremy Allison working for them, if there were things they had a need for in Samba they could just give him a call and know he'd put that on the front burner. Now, their desires are no longer relevant. If they need something they'll have to do it themselves, and if it's helping them and not the rest, they'll have to maintain a fork.
Yes, they've cut a separate peace with MS, essentially. The GPL doesn't allow this, it has the 'live free or die' clause. There's a saying, we must all hang together, for if we do not, we shall assuredly hang separately.
Novell has attempted to find a sneaky way to subvert the live free or die clause. This may not make them evil, but it certainly isn't behaviour to be rewarded. And it won't be. They just destroyed their own credibility with the community that develops the software they've bet their future on. In the process, they've converted themselves from a major player to a bit player, whether they realise it or not.
That particular dictionary has a praisewourthy tendancy to be a bit conservative. This explains why they list my definition first - it is the time honoured definition of the word. The definition you prefer is a recent 'innovation' designed to confuse issues for political means. You see, rights are a key concept of traditional liberalism, and the marxist-socialist forces around the turn of the century consciously attempted to commandeer that terminology with an entirely different meaning, divorced from that frameword entirely. Their definition is the one you are endorsing here.
Now I'm not going to tell you that traditional liberalism is perfect, but it's better than 'modern' marxist-socialism passing as liberalism. And I won't coöperate with the efforts to make the literature of traditional liberalism nonsense by changing the meaning of the words after the fact.
However, I would argue that this is not a very useful definition for 'right', because then you raise the substantial issue of who defines that which is just, morally good, proper, or fitting.
I don't agree. That's an entirely separate question. It may be raised in association with any question of morality and ethics - yet we do not conclude as a result that morality or ethics are unuseful. And we can agree on the definition of a right - I would phrase it very precisely as 'a moral claim of such force and certainty that violence may be morally used to enforce it' - and yet disagree on exactly what rights we properly have, and on what justification. So I'm afraid I don't see your objection as valid at all.
You could define it that way, but the trouble is that then you have to agree with the sentence (as far as I can tell), "It's a paedophile's right to rape any child they want."
You could make that claim, if you wish. You can make any claim you wish. However, the claim would be false on its face. No one using any recognisable variant of the classical liberal paradigm would consider it valid.
There is no right to rape anyone. There is only a right to not be raped. This is what we mean when we say that 'rights are negative' - they don't obligate others to do things for you, or to waive their own rights in favour of your own (true rights never conflict) - they obligate others merely to leave you in peace, as long as you do the same. Rights are about non-invasion or non-coërcion. If I demand that you refrain from raping me, I am in no way intruding on your rights, as they do not extend into my body. Because rights are fundamentally derived from non-coërcion and self-ownership, they can never conflict - your rights end before mine begin. One may claim whatever one wants, but no amount of claiming can alter the fact that rape is wrong and any claim to have a right to rape is self-contradictory and invalid.
To the contrary, in order to make the statement that a pædophile has a right to rape children valid, one must instead adopt the second definition of rights you cite. With that definition, all you need to do is get a legislature to vote for that proposition and voilá! the right is created, and by that definition it becomes perfectly correct and valid to claim a right to rape children. It is no longer contradictory (since this definition of rights does not contradict rape, or anything else) and, as long as the legislature approves it, it is by definition now valid.
Slashdot Mirror
We just call it measurement. ;)
I won't use the term 'Imperial' because it's completely inaccurate, as well as misleading. The traditional system of measurement in the US is a sibling to the 'Imperial' system in the UK, but it's not the same thing. A UK pint is considerably more than a US pint, for instance, a fact which is very convenient when one is fortunate enough to be drinking your Guinness by the former.
I don't like to call SI 'metric' either since that is also inaccurate and misleading. Any unit of measure is a metric. All three systems, traditional US, 'Imperial', and SI are metric systems. Unfortunately, the SI is actually a subset of another metric system, which doesn't seem to have any other proper name available, but probably *should* be called 'Imperial' as it was spread by the French Empire. But I digress...
You *can* certainly make any system work for you, if you're used to it. However traditional US measures *are* more practical in many everyday uses, even though that doesn't mean that SI units can't be used - they're just more cumbersome.
For example, division is a common task. Traditional units of measure are extremely flexible in this regard. With SI, on the other hand, many divisors are problematic. What's a third of a metre? It's an infinitely repeating decimal fraction that can only be approximated, and even the approximation is relatively cumbersome. A third of a yard is exactly one foot. What's a twelfth of a litre? Another infinitely repeating decimal fraction. A twelth of a quart is precisely 16 teaspoons, or two ounces and two teaspoons, or one third of a cup. I would expect that a site which caters to computing enthusiasts would have more people that appreciate the limitations of base ten and the advantages of other bases. Computing is built around powers of two... binary, octal, and hexidecimal primarily. Similarly, the traditional system is built around a combination of binary and trinary multiplications, which gives one far more flexibility than a rigid base ten can. And before you reply that those are unusual cases, consider that they aren't *all* that unusual, and on the other side ANY operation that is easy in SI is also easy with traditional measures.
The units themeselves may be expected to be more useful in many situations, as they *evolved* in response to needs, rather than being Cartesian abstractions conjured from thin air, but I realise this point may be rather hard to prove. But I don't think it's any accident that the most commonly used SI units are very nearly equivelant to traditional measures - the metre itself is just a slightly overlong yard, and the litre of course is very close to a quart.
In regard to temperature, it's been shown that one degree fahrenheit is a very close approximation of the minimal change in temperature a human can typically perceive. In comparison, a centigrade or celsius degree seems overly large - you can go from one room to another, noticeably hotter or cooler, yet the temperature is officially still the same.
Finally, notice that even the SI proponents recognised the impracticality of an all-decimal system, at least in regards to measures of time, or measures of angle. We still use the sexigesimal system that goes all the way back to Sumer for those, in SI as well as traditionally. And this is for good reason - just like the other traditional measures, this is a system built around a mixed base system, using both two and three, and consequently allowing a far greater range of division without becoming cumbersome. A third of the way around the circle is 120 degrees, a third of the way through the hour is 20 minutes. Can you imagine trying to divide a decimal hour, or a decimal circle, into three equal parts? Or six, or nine, or twelve, or..?
I've done that. Your "impartial scientists" turn out to be just as much religious nutjobs as the creationists and intelligent design proponents. Their religion is just more politically correct.
Here's a tip - having a 'sciency' job title doesn't make one a scientist. Understanding of, and unswerving devotion to, the scientific method, the dialectic between empirical data and logic, is what makes one a scientist.
Indeed. It is pretty firmly established that there is a warming trend on, which is the literal meaning of 'global warming' but 'Global Warming' in the context of this movie drags in several tons of extra baggage which is nowhere near so well supported. But Frosty Hardison is just being a 'useful idiot' here with his nonsensical blatherings.
Yahoo decided awhile back to remove POP access from free accounts. You now have to pay them for that access. While gmail gives it to you for free, then makes the web interface useful to you so you won't want to...
I am using just noscript. Blocking scripts from yimg.com gets rid of the ads with no freeze-ups. It also, if memory serves, interfered with some function somewhere in mail, although the basics still seem to work. I normally let their ads run, as they aren't very intrusive. Then again I also use gmail for almost everything, and rarely login on yahoo anymore.
The problem is there's no actual competition for customers who own their own phones. The companies are so used to inflated profit margins they draw from those they can talk into long term contracts with all the useless frills, people that just want phone service at a decent price aren't even on their radar.
When I saw this article I immediately thought: what kind of flaming MORON would pledge money to support drivers for Nvidious instead of open hardware? Not to mention the nueveau folks are on record they didn't ask for and don't need the money anyhow.
In addition to the links the previous two posters have given you, try system76.com. There are others. I personally would rather do business with a company that will ship a box with linux on it rather than buy from dell and then spend hours getting a refund, and I think it sends a better message, but either way, don't use Windows and don't pay for Windows.
Nonetheless, he also appears to express astonishment, dismay... the comment about what century we're in betrays him. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a text interfaces, in fact quite the contrary.
No, this is not true. The FCC regulations in question apply to the operators of the devices, not the manufacturers. Look at all the wireless devices that *do* have free drivers - they aren't illegal. If you edit the driver code to do something illegal with them, of course, you could get in trouble for that.
You can still decide not to buy the laptop that won't work, in favour of the one that will.
In the case of Ralink, at least, you don't even need to pay any more. They're in some of the least expensive wifi gear on the market.
http://www.geocities.com/win32mutt/win32.html
Still, it's a better solution just to telnet to a real computer.
There was such a thing, but MS decided it wasn't exploitable enough and declined to use it. Look up text/enriched.
Oh give it a break.
With a decent theme GNUStep is a heck of a lot better looking than OS X, let alone the other contenders. Most importantly, the visual elements are functional, because, you know, most of us use our computers to get something done, rather than just staring at it all day.
Any documents in a court case can be sealed from the general public on request of the parties, to avoid revealing trade secrets, embarrasing stuff, and so on. Then a redacted form of the document is normally made available, minus whatever they don't want you to see.
This is still misleading. NONE of Scalderas claims have been dismissed yet. NONE.
The magistrate judge threw out a number of their *evidentiary* entries, for failure to be specific. That was appealed, reviewed, and affirmed.
Actually I don't believe RH even markets workstations anymore. They're very focused on servers.
If it's illegal, the world wide web as a whole is illegal.
And your analogy is simply not analogous.
No one broke into the plaintiffs site. The defendant did not copy any copyrighted material from the plaintiffs site. He simply published the *location* of the material in question. When someone clicked on the link on the defendants site, their browser would then send a *request* to the plaintiffs server, which then copied the material and transmitted it in response.
Plaintiff had the option to configure their server NOT to make a copy and send it in such situations, but to return a 'Forbidden' error message instead, if they did not wish to allow this. As it was their server, whose configuration was entirely in their control, any copying done was done by them.
This is a very poor decision. From what I can see, it can probably be ascribed to the very poor defense mounted by the defendant. However, a 'justice system' that perpetrates injustice simply because one party is unable to retain a high powered law firm to defend them is a big problem. The US system at this point in time seems to have a lot more to do with guaranteeing income for lawyers than serving justice.
This is the live free or die clause:
Now Novell and MS tried to get around this by granting patent licenses, not to each other, but to each others customers. Depending on how a court of competent authority rules, it's either a transparent dodge and Novell no longer has any right to distribute GPL software, or the dodge works, in which case Novell's customers have lost their license as a consequence of this action. It's also quite possible that by attempting to strip their customers of their licenses, Novell could be ruled to be in violation here, even if the dodge is found valid at the first level of analysis. Furthermore, no one wants to go to court over this, because there's so much room for argument and maneuvre, and because one possible consequence of doing so would be to harm innocent third-parties who did nothing wrong.
It's a mess, and it's clear that some very smart lawyers worked very hard to make it that way.
No, Jeremy wasn't the only one working on Samba, not even close. Like most important projects, it involves a lot of people. Novell employing JA did give them an advantageous relationship with it, but not control or ownership. And no, Linux was developed and used for many years before the big companies got involved. They got involved because it was already better than what they had, and even if they all turned their backs and walked away tommorrow it would continue to be developed and used without pause.
There is no chance of that, however. For it to become 'better' than the others, they would need good relations with the community that produces the software, that's the point. The better their relations are with the community, the better the community supports them, the more likely the community is to be responsive to their needs, and so forth. If you alienate the community, they don't care what you need anymore. That's the place Novell has put itself. Think about Samba, or instance. When Novell had good standing in the community, they had Jeremy Allison working for them, if there were things they had a need for in Samba they could just give him a call and know he'd put that on the front burner. Now, their desires are no longer relevant. If they need something they'll have to do it themselves, and if it's helping them and not the rest, they'll have to maintain a fork.
Yes, they've cut a separate peace with MS, essentially. The GPL doesn't allow this, it has the 'live free or die' clause. There's a saying, we must all hang together, for if we do not, we shall assuredly hang separately. Novell has attempted to find a sneaky way to subvert the live free or die clause. This may not make them evil, but it certainly isn't behaviour to be rewarded. And it won't be. They just destroyed their own credibility with the community that develops the software they've bet their future on. In the process, they've converted themselves from a major player to a bit player, whether they realise it or not.
That particular dictionary has a praisewourthy tendancy to be a bit conservative. This explains why they list my definition first - it is the time honoured definition of the word. The definition you prefer is a recent 'innovation' designed to confuse issues for political means. You see, rights are a key concept of traditional liberalism, and the marxist-socialist forces around the turn of the century consciously attempted to commandeer that terminology with an entirely different meaning, divorced from that frameword entirely. Their definition is the one you are endorsing here.
Now I'm not going to tell you that traditional liberalism is perfect, but it's better than 'modern' marxist-socialism passing as liberalism. And I won't coöperate with the efforts to make the literature of traditional liberalism nonsense by changing the meaning of the words after the fact.
I don't agree. That's an entirely separate question. It may be raised in association with any question of morality and ethics - yet we do not conclude as a result that morality or ethics are unuseful. And we can agree on the definition of a right - I would phrase it very precisely as 'a moral claim of such force and certainty that violence may be morally used to enforce it' - and yet disagree on exactly what rights we properly have, and on what justification. So I'm afraid I don't see your objection as valid at all.
You could make that claim, if you wish. You can make any claim you wish. However, the claim would be false on its face. No one using any recognisable variant of the classical liberal paradigm would consider it valid.
There is no right to rape anyone. There is only a right to not be raped. This is what we mean when we say that 'rights are negative' - they don't obligate others to do things for you, or to waive their own rights in favour of your own (true rights never conflict) - they obligate others merely to leave you in peace, as long as you do the same. Rights are about non-invasion or non-coërcion. If I demand that you refrain from raping me, I am in no way intruding on your rights, as they do not extend into my body. Because rights are fundamentally derived from non-coërcion and self-ownership, they can never conflict - your rights end before mine begin. One may claim whatever one wants, but no amount of claiming can alter the fact that rape is wrong and any claim to have a right to rape is self-contradictory and invalid.
To the contrary, in order to make the statement that a pædophile has a right to rape children valid, one must instead adopt the second definition of rights you cite. With that definition, all you need to do is get a legislature to vote for that proposition and voilá! the right is created, and by that definition it becomes perfectly correct and valid to claim a right to rape children. It is no longer contradictory (since this definition of rights does not contradict rape, or anything else) and, as long as the legislature approves it, it is by definition now valid.