Uhhhh, not much? If the craft fails then they are only out a few million, same thing that happens when any other spacecraft fails (except they are usually far more expensive).
Generally we try to reserve the "What could possibly go wrong" meme for things that reek of a bad idea, like making walking titanium skeletal robots, giving them machine-guns and Austrian accents, then turning over control of them to google. Space sails are a pretty simple and much discussed idea, and lack any particularly bad failure modes.
Well there is the classic 4.4.4.1, and some others in that range, run by Verizon. Publicly accessible and standards compliant, also far easier to remember than whatever OpenDNS's IPs are.
More recently 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 have become available. They are run by google and I know this is slashdot, but they are at least certainly less evil than OpenDNS. Even easier then the verizon servers to remember too.
After those, there are always universities. Many local colleges or universities have publicly accessible DNS servers, just look on their websites to find out where they are.
With none of these solutions do you have to go out of your way and run DynDNS to get correct NXDOMAIN responses.
Why the hell would you want to bother doing that (it's a piss-poor solution...) when there are countless proper DNS servers out there? Having to use DynDNS just to get working standards compliant DNS is patently absurd.
Recommending OpenDNS to anyone but technical users who know exactly what services they need, that OpenDNS provides, is irresponsible at best.
I saw that this article was tagged "opendns" and for a moment thought with horror that people were tagging it that as a kind of suggestion that using OpenDNS was a solution to this. It seems like every single fucking time an article comes up about ISPs doing something wrong (generally messing with NXDOMAIN) people come out of the woodwork to suggest using OpenDNS, even though they do the exact same thing and there are plenty of perfectly standards compliant and free DNS providers to chose from.
Does this actually happen in practice? Most people who use VPNs use it because they work from home and their work requires it. I don't think we are at the stage yet where all VPN traffic is assumed to be evil.
In the past I've had more success torrenting things with comcast while VPN'd into my school, then without a VPN at all. Not that my story is evidence of much, but I haven't witnessed any sort of throttling like you claim.
The problem with using slavery as an example is that a good deal of the country didn't want to see that abolished. That's why it only got changed when the situation escalated to war.
Yeah, that sounds bad and shit, except that's not standard operating procedure.
Paper companies use the same plots over and over again for decades, cutting down the trees in the treefarm, replanting them, then coming back years later to repeat. They don't buy a new "old forest" every time they want to plant a batch of trees, it's just not economically feasible.
Really, all of this "the paper industry cuts down old forests" stuff is nonsense, the majority of it was clear-cut nearly a century ago for timber and land to farm on. The paper industry is responsible for an absurdly low percentage of deforestation, even completely ignoring the fact that they replant trees.
Instead of railing on people to stop using paper, you should encourage people to build and buy houses made of alternative construction materials, only farm in regions that have traditionally been free of wildlife. Of course that will never happen because although environmentalists hate logging, they love things made out of wood and farming just seems like such an "earthy and in-tune" thing to do... Hell, lets all support local farmers who have to clear-cut forests for their fields instead of buying food shipped in from the midwest! Yay environmentalism!
You do realize that trees grow back right? Hell, not only do they grow back, but paper companies go out of their way to make sure that they do. Do you even know anything about the paper industry at all?
No, these laws are not the worst in the world. They stop the country from having dirty tabloids like the ones from the UK, and are well applied.
Wait, really? Brazil does not have the worst libel laws in the world I'm sure*, but tabloids are completely harmless. They are trash sure, I can't deny that, but nobody of consequence actually takes them seriously. Passing laws to stop them just reeks of "can't take a joke" and "sensitive as all hell". If people are actually offended by "Brittany Spears gives birth to 5 headed alien", or "Bush calls for eradication of all Jews", then they should grow a fucking spine, not pass new laws.
*If, as you seem to be implying, Brazil's libel laws are far more strict than the UKs, then they very well may be the worst in the world. Is believing yourself to be correct a defence against slander/libel in Brazil?
You'll note that in the case of the Dunkin Donuts case you mention, nobody was actually successfully sued for libel. Someone filed a suit against an online newspaper, and some John Does, it never got farther than that. Not exactly a very good example...
Your words were:
>>>worse than libel laws..... U.S. copyright laws
The fact that I just downloaded 5 seasons of "House" and "Bones" seems to indicate otherwise.
I'm taking this to imply that you don't actually believe copyright law is worse than libel law. This is what I my comment was referring too.
Anyways, it's very easy to sue people in the US for just about anything you can dream of. This isn't a problem with libel/slander law, it's a problem with whatever set of laws govern when you can or cannot sue someone (IANAL). The difficult part is actually suing someone for libel and winning. Very rarely does this actually happen. The amount of people directly or indirectly affected by slander/libel law is very low, but bad copyright law (absurd duration) affects everyone.
Copyright law has very little teeth against consumers, but it has big sharp teeth when it comes to industry. Similarly, libel laws are far more worrisome for newspapers/publishers than they are to the average, non-journalist, citizen.
Google Maps with Navigation, that is Google's fault. They are the ones that have denied iPhone users that opportunity.
In this context, does it really matter who's fault it is? Either way, it is a reason that a consumer might chose to own an Android phone instead of an iphone.
Wait, so you are saying you see absolutely nothing wrong with US copyright laws because you happen to be technically inclined enough to not get caught? Surely laws can still be bad laws, even if they don't directly effect you*.
*and they do. US copyright laws are holding decades and decades of culture for hostage. While you may be able to download some TV shows and manage to not get fined/sued, these laws do effectively prevent people from legally distributing work that is derivative of work that, by all rights, should be public domain. The content that will never even be created so that you can torrent it is uncountable.
The same applies to Google and the judges have no power to make exceptions.
See, this is exactly the problem. Nobody is saying that the law was wrongly applied, we are saying the law is wrong.
If not blindly respecting the legitimacy of laws (in this case, incidentally of another country) makes me a nationalistic asshole, then so be it.
There are a shitton of laws I have absolutely no respect for whatsoever, and most of them are American laws. However, libel and slander laws actually are something US laws are pretty sane about. For example, in the UK, being correct is not an absolute defence against libel/slander.
But oooooh noooooo, I'm an American and I just expressed my opinion that in some ways America might be better than another particular country!!! I must be a fanatical patriot redneck who blindly loves America and gets his kicks off by slighting Europeans on online tech websites!!!
If we were to raise and eat other animals in the same quantities as we raise and eat cows, I'm sure we'd have other "problems" as well. Exactly what animal do you suggest as a replacement for cattle?
Slashdot Mirror
That does sound like a law California might try to pass though doesn't it?
http://www.tuhs.org/wiki/The_Unix_Heritage_Society
Historians can be interested in any number of things, they are not all like Indiana Jones...
Uhhhh, not much? If the craft fails then they are only out a few million, same thing that happens when any other spacecraft fails (except they are usually far more expensive).
Generally we try to reserve the "What could possibly go wrong" meme for things that reek of a bad idea, like making walking titanium skeletal robots, giving them machine-guns and Austrian accents, then turning over control of them to google. Space sails are a pretty simple and much discussed idea, and lack any particularly bad failure modes.
Well there is the classic 4.4.4.1, and some others in that range, run by Verizon. Publicly accessible and standards compliant, also far easier to remember than whatever OpenDNS's IPs are.
More recently 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 have become available. They are run by google and I know this is slashdot, but they are at least certainly less evil than OpenDNS. Even easier then the verizon servers to remember too.
After those, there are always universities. Many local colleges or universities have publicly accessible DNS servers, just look on their websites to find out where they are.
With none of these solutions do you have to go out of your way and run DynDNS to get correct NXDOMAIN responses.
Why the hell would you want to bother doing that (it's a piss-poor solution...) when there are countless proper DNS servers out there? Having to use DynDNS just to get working standards compliant DNS is patently absurd.
Recommending OpenDNS to anyone but technical users who know exactly what services they need, that OpenDNS provides, is irresponsible at best.
Thank [deity].
I saw that this article was tagged "opendns" and for a moment thought with horror that people were tagging it that as a kind of suggestion that using OpenDNS was a solution to this. It seems like every single fucking time an article comes up about ISPs doing something wrong (generally messing with NXDOMAIN) people come out of the woodwork to suggest using OpenDNS, even though they do the exact same thing and there are plenty of perfectly standards compliant and free DNS providers to chose from.
You link is actually incredibly relevant, thanks.
Does this actually happen in practice? Most people who use VPNs use it because they work from home and their work requires it. I don't think we are at the stage yet where all VPN traffic is assumed to be evil.
In the past I've had more success torrenting things with comcast while VPN'd into my school, then without a VPN at all. Not that my story is evidence of much, but I haven't witnessed any sort of throttling like you claim.
You see, it's that "next logical step" that is the evil part.
(With appologies to Godwin, but this thread was already godwin'd so what the hell...)
Thanks, that will teach me for not scrolling over :)
I actually RTFA and didn't see any video, does anyone else have another link to it? I'm really rather interesting in seeing this.
The problem with using slavery as an example is that a good deal of the country didn't want to see that abolished. That's why it only got changed when the situation escalated to war.
Is it really that hard to jam GPS-type systems? I'd be surprised if nobody planned for the possibility of needing to do so.
Ethics are relative. Claiming that someone is without them simply because their idea of ethical does not align with yours is incredibly ignorant.
Yeah, that sounds bad and shit, except that's not standard operating procedure.
Paper companies use the same plots over and over again for decades, cutting down the trees in the treefarm, replanting them, then coming back years later to repeat. They don't buy a new "old forest" every time they want to plant a batch of trees, it's just not economically feasible.
Really, all of this "the paper industry cuts down old forests" stuff is nonsense, the majority of it was clear-cut nearly a century ago for timber and land to farm on. The paper industry is responsible for an absurdly low percentage of deforestation, even completely ignoring the fact that they replant trees.
Instead of railing on people to stop using paper, you should encourage people to build and buy houses made of alternative construction materials, only farm in regions that have traditionally been free of wildlife. Of course that will never happen because although environmentalists hate logging, they love things made out of wood and farming just seems like such an "earthy and in-tune" thing to do... Hell, lets all support local farmers who have to clear-cut forests for their fields instead of buying food shipped in from the midwest! Yay environmentalism!
You do realize that trees grow back right? Hell, not only do they grow back, but paper companies go out of their way to make sure that they do. Do you even know anything about the paper industry at all?
Wait, really? Brazil does not have the worst libel laws in the world I'm sure*, but tabloids are completely harmless. They are trash sure, I can't deny that, but nobody of consequence actually takes them seriously. Passing laws to stop them just reeks of "can't take a joke" and "sensitive as all hell". If people are actually offended by "Brittany Spears gives birth to 5 headed alien", or "Bush calls for eradication of all Jews", then they should grow a fucking spine, not pass new laws.
*If, as you seem to be implying, Brazil's libel laws are far more strict than the UKs, then they very well may be the worst in the world. Is believing yourself to be correct a defence against slander/libel in Brazil?
You'll note that in the case of the Dunkin Donuts case you mention, nobody was actually successfully sued for libel. Someone filed a suit against an online newspaper, and some John Does, it never got farther than that. Not exactly a very good example...
Your words were:
I'm taking this to imply that you don't actually believe copyright law is worse than libel law. This is what I my comment was referring too.
Anyways, it's very easy to sue people in the US for just about anything you can dream of. This isn't a problem with libel/slander law, it's a problem with whatever set of laws govern when you can or cannot sue someone (IANAL). The difficult part is actually suing someone for libel and winning. Very rarely does this actually happen. The amount of people directly or indirectly affected by slander/libel law is very low, but bad copyright law (absurd duration) affects everyone.
Copyright law has very little teeth against consumers, but it has big sharp teeth when it comes to industry. Similarly, libel laws are far more worrisome for newspapers/publishers than they are to the average, non-journalist, citizen.
In this context, does it really matter who's fault it is? Either way, it is a reason that a consumer might chose to own an Android phone instead of an iphone.
Admit it, you tried this. :D
Wait, so you are saying you see absolutely nothing wrong with US copyright laws because you happen to be technically inclined enough to not get caught? Surely laws can still be bad laws, even if they don't directly effect you*.
*and they do. US copyright laws are holding decades and decades of culture for hostage. While you may be able to download some TV shows and manage to not get fined/sued, these laws do effectively prevent people from legally distributing work that is derivative of work that, by all rights, should be public domain. The content that will never even be created so that you can torrent it is uncountable.
See, this is exactly the problem. Nobody is saying that the law was wrongly applied, we are saying the law is wrong.
If not blindly respecting the legitimacy of laws (in this case, incidentally of another country) makes me a nationalistic asshole, then so be it.
There are a shitton of laws I have absolutely no respect for whatsoever, and most of them are American laws. However, libel and slander laws actually are something US laws are pretty sane about. For example, in the UK, being correct is not an absolute defence against libel/slander.
But oooooh noooooo, I'm an American and I just expressed my opinion that in some ways America might be better than another particular country!!! I must be a fanatical patriot redneck who blindly loves America and gets his kicks off by slighting Europeans on online tech websites!!!
You must be new here.
I'm fairly certain that people have a far worse environmental impact than cattle. You'll have to feed the people you eat something anyway.
"I'm sorry [NAME], I can't let you do that." is a reference to HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame.
Not get off my lawn!
If we were to raise and eat other animals in the same quantities as we raise and eat cows, I'm sure we'd have other "problems" as well. Exactly what animal do you suggest as a replacement for cattle?