Bite my shiny daffodil ass. Bite my shiny metal ass. Bite my colossal metal ass. Bite my glorious golden ass. Bite my shiny metal blogosphere. bite my splintery wooden ass
Like hell that's the one. Try Vlog. I didn't blink twice reading summary's first sentence, but if it had contained any variation on blogging I would've instantly cried that it was excessive.
Perhaps. But I don't care about real issues. I don't care about corruption, war, society's major porblems, or anything like that. I care about copyright, intellectual property in a digital age, EFF crusades, and fighting the DMCA. And to not have a hero like Lessig on our side, but rather waste him in the blackhole that is the real world...
Anyway, thank you Lessig for all the work you've done so far.
Actually the number of dimensions doesn't matter, it's still polynomial, and all polynomial functions are smaller than exponentials. The difference between two dimensions and three is only the difference between quadratic and cubic polynomials.
Let r be a given blast radius and D be the amount of damage it causes. In an exponential function, for instance, D(r)=2^r, all it takes to double the catastrophe is to increaes the radius by one unit. That is the property of exponentials - that to increase output by a factor, all you need to do is increase input by adding a constant. In a polynomial function, like D(r)=r^2 (although you can make the power as big as you like so long as it's a constant), then to double the damage you need to *multiply* the input by sqrt(2). In all polynomial growths, you can only multiply the output by multiplying the input. This is far slower than any exponential growth.
The standard practice in this situation then, would be for you to not respond at all, ending the conversation as I'm not worth the time. All that disdain should be implied by your silence.
I'm pretty sure I'm just trolling you at this point. But I am curious what will happen.
> "keep in mind that, by definition, the amount of people affected increases exponentially with the radius, assuming a fairly regular population distribution"
A nitpick, but unless you know something I don't, the number of people affected only increases quadratically. I assume we're going by the area of the circle, and not by a more complicated function, but if we are, I'd like to hear it.
What's so worthless about duck and cover? In the event you're not close enough to be vaporized or significantly irradiated, why would you want to just stand up and die due to head injury if you have an opportunity to protect yourself? Plus it's useful for natural disasters.
And most importantly of all, it helped traumatize the public, keeping them in the palms of exploitive politicians.
> "What kind of shithole do you live in that it wouldn't be ruined by the appearance of 180 butt-ugly, 300 foot high towers?"
New York. Why would I give a damn about what it looks like outside? I want power, and I value the health of the ecosystem above its damn aesthetics. And I don't understand what is so ugly about a tower. It's just a structure, and it turns. What's the problem?
> "Did you ever consider that it might be the people who actually live there who might object to this?"
Yes. I don't care. I'm telling them how they should live their lives because I would prefer that my will^W^W^W^Wwhim be forced upon them.
> "Especially when tourism is one of the most important industries in the area?"
I wouldn't mind seeing a windmill. I wouldn't mind seeing the grand canyon either, or better yet, a hydroelectric dam.
> "Next time, try assuming that the people you disagree with are at least as intelligent as you are."
I tend not to care whether or not I show them that courtesy so long as I'm not addressing them to their faces. I assumed that the slashdot crowd was composed primarily of people more interested in the technology than the aesthetics of an open plain, and therefore felt no need to put a filter over my rant.
> "It seems that you're arguing for bureaucracy to have the exclusive ability to monitor public servants? [...] At a high level, you are arguing for authoritarianism by asserting that amateur oversight is or should be undesirable."
Not at all, although that seems to be what almost everyone who replied to my comment thought I was trying to say. I am not making a judgment one way or another on whether or not the public *should* have the ability to oversee public agencies. I am merely saying that to somehow assume an individual citizen can violate the law because their beliefs about government systems tells them they have a responsibility to do so, is rubbish. I'm basically being put in a position now where I am either an anarchist who does not accept the sovereignty of the government, or an authoritarian.
So to reiterate, I have nothing against you getting a law passed that says you have the right to perform action A against person P, when P is a public servant on duty and whatever other applicable conditions are satisfied. You may then proceed to invoke this right against or on P, even if, were P not a public servant, action A would be a crime. However without that law codified somewhere, you have no right to perform A, outside of whatever moral system you adhere to internally.
> "You also indulge in extremism when you say that you don't believe that "every member of the public is entitled to oversee every public servant in all circumstances."
I used that wording ("every", "entitled", "every" again, "all") because that's the wording associated with a right. Right is a strong word. Sure there are exceptions and limits to rights, but that's besides the point I was trying to make. I was saying that as a rule I don't believe an arbitrary citizen has a right to oversee an arbitrary public servant, where the word oversee entails an action normally prohibited by law when performed on another arbitrary citizen.
> "You seem committed to the idea that the public is not entitled to oversee the police"
It depends what you mean by entitled, I guess. Does entitlement come from the sovereignty of the government or does it come from an ethics system? Because if it's the former and if that's what we're discussing here, then it's a simple matter that the public does not have a particular right if that right does in fact contradict law. If we're talking about the latter, then that's a separate point from what I was discussing in this thread.
> "You neglect to acknowledge that this could be merely public interest about public events."
My original post was an objection to the statement made by its parent, which contained a generalization that went beyond the particulars of this case. Note that for the topic of this article, at a glance I am *far* more biased towards the civillian than I am towards the officer.
Re:The best source of information.
on
ISS Goes Solar
·
· Score: 1
Flashblock, you say? I should look into some of these plugins for firefox, but I'm just too lazy. Anyway if it does what the name implies, I already have it on some of my browsers, where I just don't bother installing the damn plugin.
> "I mean... Tree-huggers everywhere would have been screaming for years if it did run on nuclear"
Hell, that's nothing. Tree-huggers will scream no matter what you do. I was shocked to learn in my Science Technology and Society class that there were actually assocations of people dedicated to fighting wind power. Wind for God's sake. Apparently it wasn't slick-looking enough for them (ruined their precious landscapes) and was a hazard to birds (true in some cases, but just propaganda with larger 5 MW generators or horizontal blades).
There's a part of me that thinks they won't be pleased until they've enumerated and denigrated* every conceivable technological solution to society's problems.
(Sorry if this post reads like a troll, but this just pisses me off.)
* I tried to convince myself that I would have learned this word without the help of George W. Bush, but in truth I couldn't find its proper spelling without googling for the phrase "denigrating the troops". Sigh.
In response to my own comments above: I can understand the mass increasing exponentially if you're talking about nuclear fuel, as the rules of nuclear decay naturally involve the exponential function, but you were talking about solar panels, where the intensity only drops off polynomially. Did you mean to refer to nuclear fuel instead?
Also, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoe lectric_generator), RTGs on previous spacecraft generate somewhere in the neighborhood of under a kilowatt of electrical energy and only a couple kilowatts of heat. Solar as far as I remember produces 1.2 kW in space per square meter, so an unfolding wing of panels easily outpowers it. Except... at the distance of Jupiter (over 4 AU) the drop off in solar intensity would be more than 1/16 so I can see what you mean.
> "The panels have to increase in size proportional to the distance from the sun squared..."
Check.
> "The weight increases exponentially."
Really? I always hate it when people abuse the term "exponential", but given that you're speaking in a scientific context I think you are probably using its intended meaning. So then, I'll ask why does it increase in that way? Why not some form of polynomial growth? Also, when you say weight, do you mean mass? If not, then with respect to what body or system?
(Note that I've tried to submit this like five times but each time the filter gets me because it's in too close a proximity with one of my other replies in this thread. That's what happens when you all bite my head off at once.)
I knew there'd be at least one person who'd seize upon my use of the word "privilege". I use that word in the same senes as when Congress allows the public the privilege of suing it, giving up their sovereign immunity for the purpose of public oversight. If it makes you happy (or less enraged), pick another word. "Ability", "responsibility", "duty", whatever you like. But I don't call it a "right" because we're not talking about broad democratic ideals of how the government works for the people and not the other way around; we're talking about the public (as in, any arbitrary person, not an official representative) and a particular government organization. Since I don't believe that every member of the public is entitled to oversee every public servant in all circumstances, I chose not to use a word as permissive as "right".
You make a good argument for the legitimizing of this practice, or in cases where it's already legitimate, to not outlaw it. And I agree. But I was referring to their rights as citizens where no law explicitly grants the public oversight capabilities in this manner. That is, you can't just take an ideal that is not implemented in law and act as if it were and then be righteously outraged when you're arrested for it.
It's not a matter of precedent in the legal sense. In those cases you specifically waive your right to privacy. By default you have it. (Maybe. I am not a lawyer.) As for whether police officers should be allowed to be video taped, I'm not arguing that it should be specifically disallowed, I'm just saying that individuals have no right to bend the law whenever they feel they're morally justified in doing so.
Wow. Just fucking wow. I check my messages on the front page and see 13 replies to my GP post. This is only the fifth or so that I've gotten to but each of them so far have an attitude of "Fuck the public servants, they know they have it coming" to various degrees of trolling or flaming. And although I'll reply to this post, it's not because there's anything disagreeable in your reply, it's because it's not inflammatory like some of the others. (So, no offense to you.)
Paraphrased from a previous slashdot comment that I read a while ago: It used to be that you had an expectation of privacy pretty much everywhere. So much of the country was sparsely populated and undeveloped, that you could take anyone you wanted aside and have a word with them without any reasonable fear of being overheard and having it used against you. That's why there's no explicit right to privacy in the Constitution - a world without it was inconceivable back then, so they never thought of it as something that needed to be identified and protected. That's no longer the case today, in the world of technology and public and private interests. Yes, we still have our homes, but that's about it. Telecommunications have long been compromised in various ways by the government. Private offices have long restricted or spied upon employees, and a recent article told us about how new government regulations mandate the logging of instant messaging and email correspondences.
In this world of eroding privacy, slashdot as a rule seems to take exception and voice outrage at the loss of this freedom. Yet suddenly because the target of this particular offense is a police officer, you all seem to have changed your minds and now argue that privacy should be unavailable by default. That being police officers somehow puts them below the protection of the law.
My original point was that being a public servant does not in itself nullify civil rights. And I must say this seems to me to be an extremely obvious point. To disagree is a fallacy on the same level as the jackass who says "My taxes pay your salary" when he gets pulled over for speeding. Until/unless the government specifically crafts an exception entitling the public to spy on them, it isn't allowed. Whether or not it *should* be allowed as a matter of law is another question, although that is perhaps what some of you were getting at, hence the confusion.
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the original law against the act of videotaping outdoors in a public area, or at least this particular application of the law. This is however entirely independent of the fact that the victims (using that word in the context of the crime) are police officers.
This is a stupid rhetorical point that needs to be made: Would you like it if anyone could video tape you doing your job? I don't see why the fact that they're public servants alone would strip them of that protection. There would have to be an explicit exception in the law allotting the public the privilege of overseeing them.
Elephants Dream, contrary to the opinions of thousands of slashdotters and countless others, actually had a plot. The old man constructed an elaborate fantasy world governed by his particular set of rules, and its existence depended on someone else believing in and acknowledging them. When the younger character abandoned him his existence was threatened, so he attacked his protégé and destroyed his own world in the process.
The voice acting was annoying, and some details that could've made the plot clearer were missing, and the opening scene was poorly animated. All these details could've been improved with more time, but when you're on a budget and a schedule you have to sacrifice some creative effort and freedom (in this case more the former than the latter). So I hope they allot themselves more room to complete the project this time around.
Was that exaggeration/rant, or are there actually patents on IPv6? That would seem strange given it's an open protocol. On what technology in particular?
The second case you described, the 10mb between a dedicated server and a client, is the one I'm talking about. But suppose that you weren't operating on a cable modem, but had as fast a link with your home provider as possible. What would the limit be then?
To state it in an alternate form, pick two random ISPs in the world, and pick the highest available service from both of them; what's the highest speed you can obtain between those two networks, without specifically contracting for a link between those points? How does the answer change depending on if we're talking Tier 3 or strictly Tier 1 or 2?
Slashdot Mirror
"Orly?"
"Yarly."
"Kthx."
"Kekeke"
Bite my shiny daffodil ass.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
Bite my colossal metal ass.
Bite my glorious golden ass.
Bite my shiny metal blogosphere.
bite my splintery wooden ass
One of these is not like the other.
Like hell that's the one. Try Vlog. I didn't blink twice reading summary's first sentence, but if it had contained any variation on blogging I would've instantly cried that it was excessive.
Perhaps. But I don't care about real issues. I don't care about corruption, war, society's major porblems, or anything like that. I care about copyright, intellectual property in a digital age, EFF crusades, and fighting the DMCA. And to not have a hero like Lessig on our side, but rather waste him in the blackhole that is the real world...
Anyway, thank you Lessig for all the work you've done so far.
Actually the number of dimensions doesn't matter, it's still polynomial, and all polynomial functions are smaller than exponentials. The difference between two dimensions and three is only the difference between quadratic and cubic polynomials.
Let r be a given blast radius and D be the amount of damage it causes. In an exponential function, for instance, D(r)=2^r, all it takes to double the catastrophe is to increaes the radius by one unit. That is the property of exponentials - that to increase output by a factor, all you need to do is increase input by adding a constant. In a polynomial function, like D(r)=r^2 (although you can make the power as big as you like so long as it's a constant), then to double the damage you need to *multiply* the input by sqrt(2). In all polynomial growths, you can only multiply the output by multiplying the input. This is far slower than any exponential growth.
The standard practice in this situation then, would be for you to not respond at all, ending the conversation as I'm not worth the time. All that disdain should be implied by your silence.
I'm pretty sure I'm just trolling you at this point. But I am curious what will happen.
> "keep in mind that, by definition, the amount of people affected increases exponentially with the radius, assuming a fairly regular population distribution"
A nitpick, but unless you know something I don't, the number of people affected only increases quadratically. I assume we're going by the area of the circle, and not by a more complicated function, but if we are, I'd like to hear it.
What's so worthless about duck and cover? In the event you're not close enough to be vaporized or significantly irradiated, why would you want to just stand up and die due to head injury if you have an opportunity to protect yourself? Plus it's useful for natural disasters.
And most importantly of all, it helped traumatize the public, keeping them in the palms of exploitive politicians.
> "What kind of shithole do you live in that it wouldn't be ruined by the appearance of 180 butt-ugly, 300 foot high towers?"
New York. Why would I give a damn about what it looks like outside? I want power, and I value the health of the ecosystem above its damn aesthetics. And I don't understand what is so ugly about a tower. It's just a structure, and it turns. What's the problem?
> "Did you ever consider that it might be the people who actually live there who might object to this?"
Yes. I don't care. I'm telling them how they should live their lives because I would prefer that my will^W^W^W^Wwhim be forced upon them.
> "Especially when tourism is one of the most important industries in the area?"
I wouldn't mind seeing a windmill. I wouldn't mind seeing the grand canyon either, or better yet, a hydroelectric dam.
> "Next time, try assuming that the people you disagree with are at least as intelligent as you are."
I tend not to care whether or not I show them that courtesy so long as I'm not addressing them to their faces. I assumed that the slashdot crowd was composed primarily of people more interested in the technology than the aesthetics of an open plain, and therefore felt no need to put a filter over my rant.
> "It seems that you're arguing for bureaucracy to have the exclusive ability to monitor public servants? [...] At a high level, you are arguing for authoritarianism by asserting that amateur oversight is or should be undesirable."
Not at all, although that seems to be what almost everyone who replied to my comment thought I was trying to say. I am not making a judgment one way or another on whether or not the public *should* have the ability to oversee public agencies. I am merely saying that to somehow assume an individual citizen can violate the law because their beliefs about government systems tells them they have a responsibility to do so, is rubbish. I'm basically being put in a position now where I am either an anarchist who does not accept the sovereignty of the government, or an authoritarian.
So to reiterate, I have nothing against you getting a law passed that says you have the right to perform action A against person P, when P is a public servant on duty and whatever other applicable conditions are satisfied. You may then proceed to invoke this right against or on P, even if, were P not a public servant, action A would be a crime. However without that law codified somewhere, you have no right to perform A, outside of whatever moral system you adhere to internally.
> "You also indulge in extremism when you say that you don't believe that "every member of the public is entitled to oversee every public servant in all circumstances."
I used that wording ("every", "entitled", "every" again, "all") because that's the wording associated with a right. Right is a strong word. Sure there are exceptions and limits to rights, but that's besides the point I was trying to make. I was saying that as a rule I don't believe an arbitrary citizen has a right to oversee an arbitrary public servant, where the word oversee entails an action normally prohibited by law when performed on another arbitrary citizen.
> "You seem committed to the idea that the public is not entitled to oversee the police"
It depends what you mean by entitled, I guess. Does entitlement come from the sovereignty of the government or does it come from an ethics system? Because if it's the former and if that's what we're discussing here, then it's a simple matter that the public does not have a particular right if that right does in fact contradict law. If we're talking about the latter, then that's a separate point from what I was discussing in this thread.
> "You neglect to acknowledge that this could be merely public interest about public events."
My original post was an objection to the statement made by its parent, which contained a generalization that went beyond the particulars of this case. Note that for the topic of this article, at a glance I am *far* more biased towards the civillian than I am towards the officer.
Flashblock, you say? I should look into some of these plugins for firefox, but I'm just too lazy. Anyway if it does what the name implies, I already have it on some of my browsers, where I just don't bother installing the damn plugin.
That's such an artificial and forced cliche. It's like you're trying to make your own meme... IN SPACE!
> "I mean... Tree-huggers everywhere would have been screaming for years if it did run on nuclear"
Hell, that's nothing. Tree-huggers will scream no matter what you do. I was shocked to learn in my Science Technology and Society class that there were actually assocations of people dedicated to fighting wind power. Wind for God's sake. Apparently it wasn't slick-looking enough for them (ruined their precious landscapes) and was a hazard to birds (true in some cases, but just propaganda with larger 5 MW generators or horizontal blades).
There's a part of me that thinks they won't be pleased until they've enumerated and denigrated* every conceivable technological solution to society's problems.
(Sorry if this post reads like a troll, but this just pisses me off.)
* I tried to convince myself that I would have learned this word without the help of George W. Bush, but in truth I couldn't find its proper spelling without googling for the phrase "denigrating the troops". Sigh.
In response to my own comments above: I can understand the mass increasing exponentially if you're talking about nuclear fuel, as the rules of nuclear decay naturally involve the exponential function, but you were talking about solar panels, where the intensity only drops off polynomially. Did you mean to refer to nuclear fuel instead?
e lectric_generator), RTGs on previous spacecraft generate somewhere in the neighborhood of under a kilowatt of electrical energy and only a couple kilowatts of heat. Solar as far as I remember produces 1.2 kW in space per square meter, so an unfolding wing of panels easily outpowers it. Except... at the distance of Jupiter (over 4 AU) the drop off in solar intensity would be more than 1/16 so I can see what you mean.
Also, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermo
So I'm not disagreeing, just musing aloud.
> "The panels have to increase in size proportional to the distance from the sun squared..."
Check.
> "The weight increases exponentially."
Really? I always hate it when people abuse the term "exponential", but given that you're speaking in a scientific context I think you are probably using its intended meaning. So then, I'll ask why does it increase in that way? Why not some form of polynomial growth? Also, when you say weight, do you mean mass? If not, then with respect to what body or system?
By consent.
(Note that I've tried to submit this like five times but each time the filter gets me because it's in too close a proximity with one of my other replies in this thread. That's what happens when you all bite my head off at once.)
I knew there'd be at least one person who'd seize upon my use of the word "privilege". I use that word in the same senes as when Congress allows the public the privilege of suing it, giving up their sovereign immunity for the purpose of public oversight. If it makes you happy (or less enraged), pick another word. "Ability", "responsibility", "duty", whatever you like. But I don't call it a "right" because we're not talking about broad democratic ideals of how the government works for the people and not the other way around; we're talking about the public (as in, any arbitrary person, not an official representative) and a particular government organization. Since I don't believe that every member of the public is entitled to oversee every public servant in all circumstances, I chose not to use a word as permissive as "right".
Now can we move on?
You make a good argument for the legitimizing of this practice, or in cases where it's already legitimate, to not outlaw it. And I agree. But I was referring to their rights as citizens where no law explicitly grants the public oversight capabilities in this manner. That is, you can't just take an ideal that is not implemented in law and act as if it were and then be righteously outraged when you're arrested for it.
It's not a matter of precedent in the legal sense. In those cases you specifically waive your right to privacy. By default you have it. (Maybe. I am not a lawyer.) As for whether police officers should be allowed to be video taped, I'm not arguing that it should be specifically disallowed, I'm just saying that individuals have no right to bend the law whenever they feel they're morally justified in doing so.
That was quite informative, but it doesn't explain why the stormtroopers sucked at shooting down Luke's ship on the final Death Star run.
Wow. Just fucking wow. I check my messages on the front page and see 13 replies to my GP post. This is only the fifth or so that I've gotten to but each of them so far have an attitude of "Fuck the public servants, they know they have it coming" to various degrees of trolling or flaming. And although I'll reply to this post, it's not because there's anything disagreeable in your reply, it's because it's not inflammatory like some of the others. (So, no offense to you.)
Paraphrased from a previous slashdot comment that I read a while ago: It used to be that you had an expectation of privacy pretty much everywhere. So much of the country was sparsely populated and undeveloped, that you could take anyone you wanted aside and have a word with them without any reasonable fear of being overheard and having it used against you. That's why there's no explicit right to privacy in the Constitution - a world without it was inconceivable back then, so they never thought of it as something that needed to be identified and protected. That's no longer the case today, in the world of technology and public and private interests. Yes, we still have our homes, but that's about it. Telecommunications have long been compromised in various ways by the government. Private offices have long restricted or spied upon employees, and a recent article told us about how new government regulations mandate the logging of instant messaging and email correspondences.
In this world of eroding privacy, slashdot as a rule seems to take exception and voice outrage at the loss of this freedom. Yet suddenly because the target of this particular offense is a police officer, you all seem to have changed your minds and now argue that privacy should be unavailable by default. That being police officers somehow puts them below the protection of the law.
My original point was that being a public servant does not in itself nullify civil rights. And I must say this seems to me to be an extremely obvious point. To disagree is a fallacy on the same level as the jackass who says "My taxes pay your salary" when he gets pulled over for speeding. Until/unless the government specifically crafts an exception entitling the public to spy on them, it isn't allowed. Whether or not it *should* be allowed as a matter of law is another question, although that is perhaps what some of you were getting at, hence the confusion.
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the original law against the act of videotaping outdoors in a public area, or at least this particular application of the law. This is however entirely independent of the fact that the victims (using that word in the context of the crime) are police officers.
This is a stupid rhetorical point that needs to be made: Would you like it if anyone could video tape you doing your job? I don't see why the fact that they're public servants alone would strip them of that protection. There would have to be an explicit exception in the law allotting the public the privilege of overseeing them.
Elephants Dream, contrary to the opinions of thousands of slashdotters and countless others, actually had a plot. The old man constructed an elaborate fantasy world governed by his particular set of rules, and its existence depended on someone else believing in and acknowledging them. When the younger character abandoned him his existence was threatened, so he attacked his protégé and destroyed his own world in the process.
The voice acting was annoying, and some details that could've made the plot clearer were missing, and the opening scene was poorly animated. All these details could've been improved with more time, but when you're on a budget and a schedule you have to sacrifice some creative effort and freedom (in this case more the former than the latter). So I hope they allot themselves more room to complete the project this time around.
Was that exaggeration/rant, or are there actually patents on IPv6? That would seem strange given it's an open protocol. On what technology in particular?
The second case you described, the 10mb between a dedicated server and a client, is the one I'm talking about. But suppose that you weren't operating on a cable modem, but had as fast a link with your home provider as possible. What would the limit be then?
To state it in an alternate form, pick two random ISPs in the world, and pick the highest available service from both of them; what's the highest speed you can obtain between those two networks, without specifically contracting for a link between those points? How does the answer change depending on if we're talking Tier 3 or strictly Tier 1 or 2?