For sure, I think we're back down to "what does free mean?" - an agreed free exchange of data over a network, where each peer pays for their part of the infrastructure, and agrees to pay for their share of the communal infrastructure, perhaps?
If it's free as in free beer, does that mean you will give me an antenna, an AP, a laptop with a wireless card so it's free to me? probably not. You'll ask me to pay for my kit, pay for a share towards the central infrastructure (backhaul costs, your server etc), and once we've got this in place we can exchange packets for free, this is probably what I think we mean by "free".
$500 is cheaper than free - you give me (a school administrator) something for free, I've got no comeback if something goes wrong. I might be left with a whole bunch of unusable machines. If I hand over a small amount of money, we'll probably exchange some sort of contract with some sort of support agreement. Something goes wrong and I can call you and get support, if I need to I can sue you for selling me unfit goods. I'm very likely to be assured of a better deal by putting $500 dollars on the table.
yeah, sorry, it was a bit of a cheap shot, couldn't resist it:-) will be funny to see what kind of moderation I get:-)
Speaking as somebody in the UK, where there's a strong belief at policy level in the effectiveness in CCTV, it will be interesting to watch how the whole thing unfolds, human rights vs demand for safety and capture of the bombers. Unfortunately I think we're going to see more laws passed giving more rights to authorities to monitor us and request information, without enough careful thought about long term consequences or issues of civil liberties. I guess that's typical of politicans generally across the planet... though I have some sympathy for them in this situation. Hopefully some of our more thoughtful representatives will rise to the challenge and offer more measured responses. There's going to be a lot of pressure on the politicians, people are a bit shaken up by this.
It's all very fine for government ministers who travel around in limousines to tell us to get back onto the public transport. People will do though, partly out of defiance maybe but mostly because they have to, if you don't go to work you lose your job....
"Innocent until proven guilty. Although that statement is ignored just as often in the US as it is in England, laws that we pass try to at least give the impression that we respect it." umm, Guantanamo Bay?
yup, I agree - blog = diary. Whoopee, people have been keeping diaries for hundreds of years. People have been writing diary columns in newspapers for ooh at least a hundred years, and receiving mails in response to their "postings" which they in turn may respond to and discuss. Can somebody tell me why blogs are so different? (medium aside)
You have an interesting perspective - "gentlemen's terrorism".. this is a rather romantic expression... can I ask your nationality/ usual location? I am guessing you've not lived in one of the towns bombed at the time of the threats? Can I ask if you live in a place which is regularly the subject of bombings? I'm really interested in your perspective and your choice to post anonymously.
depends on the "simulation" - what level of complexity is the simulation? A 'model' is always a simplified version of a real environment - as you note.."in real life..." things are more complex. So it's down to how closely you want to move towards 'reality' and what is 'sufficient' for your purposes in the simulator. A simplified approach might be a closed energy model where the energy that leaves one part of the system is transfered to another, maybe it has to be more abstract than extending the ecology to additional life forms?
I guess fuel savings depend on gas. Here in the UK, gas (petrol) is something like 5.5 dollars a gallon (86p a litre standard unleaded x 3.78 (litres in a US gallon) x 1.74 (sterling to dollars). So I am guessing saving fuel is more attractive in the UK (and Europe generally I suppose) than in North America?
"Asylum seeker" means the same in the UK as it ever did.
Technically, and legally, yes. But the term has become demonised in the media: "Asylum seeker" in the poor quality press is often mentioned in stories about thefts, fraud, fake visa applications and so on, the implication being that most if not all asylum seekers are criminals looking for a soft country on which to prey. I am concerned that the neutral term "asylum seeker" - simply somebody seeking sanctuary, is being degraded and criminalised: e.g. the Daily Mail's statement that "we resent the scroungers, beggars and crooks who are prepared to cross every country in Europe to reach our generous benefits system" (2001). An interesting report is here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hors243.pdf (Home Office study). IMHO, if somebody who is penniless and being raped and tortured in their home country somehow manages to get half way across the planet they at least deserve a break and a chance to plead their case. After all the UK has an aging population - we *need* more young people here.
I think "wardriving" fits into the same category, a term that could easily become criminalised, except the criminalisation could be self inflicted because of the emotive expression itself. Dumb geeks wear it with pride, I think because it feels macho, even though no testerone or physical ability (well not much) is required to walk or drive around with a laptop and a bit of software. I think a more neutral expression would be a reallllly good idea....:-)
yup, proper old skool British car. Rolls-Royces: too common. Bristol don't have any dealers, just one showroom in London, and rumour has it that if they don't like the look of you they just won't bother opening the door to let you in. I have to admit I really don't like the design of most of the last thirty years, but some of the 40s and 50s ones were superb.
Does anybody else find "wardriving" a puerile expression? It's interesting to see the St. Petersberg Times article pick up on the expression with a little frisson of excitement - though it gives the term's heritage. I can feel the ripples of an expression being criminalised (a comparative example in the UK is watching "asylum seeker" being re-interpreted), and hence the associated activity being criminalised as well...
err... read grandparent- he mentioned "4 year old daughter" not "*real hacker*" (hmmm....). I don't imagine he's expecting his 4 yr old daughter to "work on a vt220 with screen, slrn, bitchx, mutt, dozens of consoles, vim, ssh". I imagine his daughter's hoped for experience is more like the typical four year old, wobbling a mouse around to click on the nice big pictures, having fun with some edutainment and maybe do a little tentative typing of their name etc, so when they go to school it will be a skill they have in common with their better sighted friends.
Mod parent up - "rights" are socially constructed - they are agreed by a group of people - a society. Try arguing your rights to the local wildlife if you're the only person stranded on a proverbial desert island. But I don't think any rights are inalienable and universal: look throughout history, and even in the present you'll find differing opinions, even including the right to kill others without reasonable justification - (murder to you might be a reasonable political/military/religious/personal act to another). As parent notes, it's a whole grey area.
3) As a source of revenue for the state. Prisons are big business and a convenient source of cheap labour
I think this may vary from country to country and may not be true universally. In many European countries the prison service is run by the state, so there is a different model from countries where prisons are run (for profit, I assume) by private companies paid by the state.
I think the 'cheap labour' aspect is a by-product of people being locked up with a lot of times on their hands, and the philosophical stance that these people should not be paid an attractive wage for the work (pennance?) they are carrying out. The question I'd ask would be "cheap for whom?" - I should imagine a cheaper form of labour for 'the state' would be to have these individuals working in legitimate jobs in private enterprises - no need to house, feed, insure, otherwise look after the labour force, and more taxes coming in. Probably results in an overall cheaper form of labour for the state if the ambition is the financially cheapest method of acquiring mail bags/ roads, etc.
No, it's a licence (that's why it's called a licence) to receive broadcasts, that's a large funding stream for the BBC here (IMHO much preferable to having perfectly good programmes broken up every few minutes with inane advertising). You can own a TV in the UK without a TV licence. It's possible to argue that you only use your TV as a video / DVD monitor, I know some people who have successfully argued it - in at least one case legitimately (video editing suite). So it's not a compulsory tax.
"Big Three browsers" - anybody provide stats?
on
Opera 8 Released
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· Score: 1
IE, Opera, and Firefox as "the big three"... can somebody point me to reliable guesstimates (!) on market breakdown of usage? cheers.
Judging from my experience, it's a mixture of curiosity (enjoying tinkering) and courage (not being afraid to try out things).
Don't forget - *purpose* If you have no reason to use it, you won't try it. Slashdotters will play with technology just because it's technology - tinkering - but for many people, if you don't need it, why try it? People don't often try new things if there is no reason to , and they are otherwise busy, nothing to do with "courage". Are you a coward because you haven't rebuilt an old motorbike from scratch, or grown different variants of carrots to see which thrive better in sandy soil? Probably it's just because you have no reason to, you're not interested, and it doesn't solve a problem. If you needed transport to get to work, or needed to feed your family from what you could grow, then maybe you'd have a reason to do it. Same with internet/web services.
Queen Victoria died in 1901. In 1910 the UK had two monarchs, Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, died 6 May), and George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, changed name to Windsor). So I guess your house is more rightly known as Edwardian, or Georgian. Me, also sitting in a Georgian house I suppose - 1729 built, George II:-)
What's the problem with 911 calls? is it that the VOIP phone requires power, whereas standard house phones will operate even if power is out in a house? or is it something to do with what numbers can be dialled?
People bring their previous references with them : "Gnome" is a word they've probably previously used and have associations for what this means. Hence the marketing drive to pick meaningless, inoffensive, pronounceable names for products. It's big business. Call your product "Nova" in English to sound high tech and Spanish speakers will read this as "doesn't go". I can't imagine trying to persuade the administration team to choose software called "XFCE-buntu" or any other highly referential to insiders, exclusive to outsiders name. A name which is highly self-referential might win you sales from alpha geeks and developers but will likely exclude a wider audience.
Surely if you want to appear affiliated with the US govt then you should use a.gov address. My belief was that having a.us address meant that you were situated in the US; following the ISO 3166 country codes. I understand of course this is not strictly adhered to but perhaps it would be worth opening the debate again? After all, I'm in the UK and we mess it up by using.uk instead of.gb (anybody know how that came about?) , and nobody minded me registering.com and.org addresses even though I gave a UK address when registering.
I guess this might be an EU / USA divide, lots of places in EU are feasible to commute instead of 2 hour car journeys. (Mind you in the UK we've had decades of cutbacks on our railways so it does depend on which country you're in). Big cities have major problems with parking so public transit systems often win in this regard. Ironically several cities in the UK are developing / considering urban trams/ train systems after a large number of urban transit systems were ripped out middle of the last century as car ownership became the desired goal. As far I understand in the US public transit systems were decimated to a far greater extent than in Europe? (Also of course the different population/geography spread probably plays a great factor).
Slashdot Mirror
If it's free as in free beer, does that mean you will give me an antenna, an AP, a laptop with a wireless card so it's free to me? probably not. You'll ask me to pay for my kit, pay for a share towards the central infrastructure (backhaul costs, your server etc), and once we've got this in place we can exchange packets for free, this is probably what I think we mean by "free".
$500 is cheaper than free - you give me (a school administrator) something for free, I've got no comeback if something goes wrong. I might be left with a whole bunch of unusable machines. If I hand over a small amount of money, we'll probably exchange some sort of contract with some sort of support agreement. Something goes wrong and I can call you and get support, if I need to I can sue you for selling me unfit goods. I'm very likely to be assured of a better deal by putting $500 dollars on the table.
yeah, sorry, it was a bit of a cheap shot, couldn't resist it :-) will be funny to see what kind of moderation I get :-)
Speaking as somebody in the UK, where there's a strong belief at policy level in the effectiveness in CCTV, it will be interesting to watch how the whole thing unfolds, human rights vs demand for safety and capture of the bombers. Unfortunately I think we're going to see more laws passed giving more rights to authorities to monitor us and request information, without enough careful thought about long term consequences or issues of civil liberties. I guess that's typical of politicans generally across the planet ... though I have some sympathy for them in this situation. Hopefully some of our more thoughtful representatives will rise to the challenge and offer more measured responses. There's going to be a lot of pressure on the politicians, people are a bit shaken up by this.
It's all very fine for government ministers who travel around in limousines to tell us to get back onto the public transport. People will do though, partly out of defiance maybe but mostly because they have to, if you don't go to work you lose your job....
"Innocent until proven guilty. Although that statement is ignored just as often in the US as it is in England, laws that we pass try to at least give the impression that we respect it."
umm, Guantanamo Bay?
yup, I agree - blog = diary. Whoopee, people have been keeping diaries for hundreds of years. People have been writing diary columns in newspapers for ooh at least a hundred years, and receiving mails in response to their "postings" which they in turn may respond to and discuss. Can somebody tell me why blogs are so different? (medium aside)
You have an interesting perspective - "gentlemen's terrorism".. this is a rather romantic expression... can I ask your nationality/ usual location? I am guessing you've not lived in one of the towns bombed at the time of the threats? Can I ask if you live in a place which is regularly the subject of bombings? I'm really interested in your perspective and your choice to post anonymously.
depends on the "simulation" - what level of complexity is the simulation? A 'model' is always a simplified version of a real environment - as you note .."in real life..." things are more complex. So it's down to how closely you want to move towards 'reality' and what is 'sufficient' for your purposes in the simulator. A simplified approach might be a closed energy model where the energy that leaves one part of the system is transfered to another, maybe it has to be more abstract than extending the ecology to additional life forms?
I guess fuel savings depend on gas. Here in the UK, gas (petrol) is something like 5.5 dollars a gallon (86p a litre standard unleaded x 3.78 (litres in a US gallon) x 1.74 (sterling to dollars). So I am guessing saving fuel is more attractive in the UK (and Europe generally I suppose) than in North America?
Technically, and legally, yes. But the term has become demonised in the media: "Asylum seeker" in the poor quality press is often mentioned in stories about thefts, fraud, fake visa applications and so on, the implication being that most if not all asylum seekers are criminals looking for a soft country on which to prey. I am concerned that the neutral term "asylum seeker" - simply somebody seeking sanctuary, is being degraded and criminalised: e.g. the Daily Mail's statement that "we resent the scroungers, beggars and crooks who are prepared to cross every country in Europe to reach our generous benefits system" (2001). An interesting report is here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hors243.pdf (Home Office study). IMHO, if somebody who is penniless and being raped and tortured in their home country somehow manages to get half way across the planet they at least deserve a break and a chance to plead their case. After all the UK has an aging population - we *need* more young people here.
:-)
I think "wardriving" fits into the same category, a term that could easily become criminalised, except the criminalisation could be self inflicted because of the emotive expression itself. Dumb geeks wear it with pride, I think because it feels macho, even though no testerone or physical ability (well not much) is required to walk or drive around with a laptop and a bit of software. I think a more neutral expression would be a reallllly good idea....
yup, proper old skool British car. Rolls-Royces: too common. Bristol don't have any dealers, just one showroom in London, and rumour has it that if they don't like the look of you they just won't bother opening the door to let you in. I have to admit I really don't like the design of most of the last thirty years, but some of the 40s and 50s ones were superb.
I'd take a proper car and I'm sure quite few go for a heck of a lot more than this. Some cars can cost a few quid these days....
Does anybody else find "wardriving" a puerile expression? It's interesting to see the St. Petersberg Times article pick up on the expression with a little frisson of excitement - though it gives the term's heritage. I can feel the ripples of an expression being criminalised (a comparative example in the UK is watching "asylum seeker" being re-interpreted), and hence the associated activity being criminalised as well...
err... read grandparent- he mentioned "4 year old daughter" not "*real hacker*" (hmmm....). I don't imagine he's expecting his 4 yr old daughter to "work on a vt220 with screen, slrn, bitchx, mutt, dozens of consoles, vim, ssh". I imagine his daughter's hoped for experience is more like the typical four year old, wobbling a mouse around to click on the nice big pictures, having fun with some edutainment and maybe do a little tentative typing of their name etc, so when they go to school it will be a skill they have in common with their better sighted friends.
Mod parent up - "rights" are socially constructed - they are agreed by a group of people - a society. Try arguing your rights to the local wildlife if you're the only person stranded on a proverbial desert island. But I don't think any rights are inalienable and universal: look throughout history, and even in the present you'll find differing opinions, even including the right to kill others without reasonable justification - (murder to you might be a reasonable political/military /religious/personal act to another). As parent notes, it's a whole grey area.
the little E thingy with two bars is the symbol for Euros, not pounds sterling. 20 Euros is about 30 Canadian dollars.
there is a set of seats which are? I'd heard the back row, is this true?
I think this may vary from country to country and may not be true universally. In many European countries the prison service is run by the state, so there is a different model from countries where prisons are run (for profit, I assume) by private companies paid by the state.
I think the 'cheap labour' aspect is a by-product of people being locked up with a lot of times on their hands, and the philosophical stance that these people should not be paid an attractive wage for the work (pennance?) they are carrying out. The question I'd ask would be "cheap for whom?" - I should imagine a cheaper form of labour for 'the state' would be to have these individuals working in legitimate jobs in private enterprises - no need to house, feed, insure, otherwise look after the labour force, and more taxes coming in. Probably results in an overall cheaper form of labour for the state if the ambition is the financially cheapest method of acquiring mail bags/ roads, etc.
No, it's a licence (that's why it's called a licence) to receive broadcasts, that's a large funding stream for the BBC here (IMHO much preferable to having perfectly good programmes broken up every few minutes with inane advertising). You can own a TV in the UK without a TV licence. It's possible to argue that you only use your TV as a video / DVD monitor, I know some people who have successfully argued it - in at least one case legitimately (video editing suite). So it's not a compulsory tax.
IE, Opera, and Firefox as "the big three"... can somebody point me to reliable guesstimates (!) on market breakdown of usage? cheers.
Don't forget - *purpose* If you have no reason to use it, you won't try it. Slashdotters will play with technology just because it's technology - tinkering - but for many people, if you don't need it, why try it? People don't often try new things if there is no reason to , and they are otherwise busy, nothing to do with "courage". Are you a coward because you haven't rebuilt an old motorbike from scratch, or grown different variants of carrots to see which thrive better in sandy soil? Probably it's just because you have no reason to, you're not interested, and it doesn't solve a problem. If you needed transport to get to work, or needed to feed your family from what you could grow, then maybe you'd have a reason to do it. Same with internet/web services.
Queen Victoria died in 1901. In 1910 the UK had two monarchs, Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, died 6 May), and George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, changed name to Windsor). So I guess your house is more rightly known as Edwardian, or Georgian. Me, also sitting in a Georgian house I suppose - 1729 built, George II :-)
What's the problem with 911 calls? is it that the VOIP phone requires power, whereas standard house phones will operate even if power is out in a house? or is it something to do with what numbers can be dialled?
People bring their previous references with them : "Gnome" is a word they've probably previously used and have associations for what this means. Hence the marketing drive to pick meaningless, inoffensive, pronounceable names for products. It's big business. Call your product "Nova" in English to sound high tech and Spanish speakers will read this as "doesn't go". I can't imagine trying to persuade the administration team to choose software called "XFCE-buntu" or any other highly referential to insiders, exclusive to outsiders name. A name which is highly self-referential might win you sales from alpha geeks and developers but will likely exclude a wider audience.
Surely if you want to appear affiliated with the US govt then you should use a .gov address. My belief was that having a .us address meant that you were situated in the US; following the ISO 3166 country codes. I understand of course this is not strictly adhered to but perhaps it would be worth opening the debate again? After all, I'm in the UK and we mess it up by using .uk instead of .gb (anybody know how that came about?) , and nobody minded me registering .com and .org addresses even though I gave a UK address when registering.
I guess this might be an EU / USA divide, lots of places in EU are feasible to commute instead of 2 hour car journeys. (Mind you in the UK we've had decades of cutbacks on our railways so it does depend on which country you're in). Big cities have major problems with parking so public transit systems often win in this regard. Ironically several cities in the UK are developing / considering urban trams/ train systems after a large number of urban transit systems were ripped out middle of the last century as car ownership became the desired goal. As far I understand in the US public transit systems were decimated to a far greater extent than in Europe? (Also of course the different population/geography spread probably plays a great factor).