however, murder is already illegal. conspiracy to commit murder, even more so.
A better solution, why should copyright even last until the authors death. What if the state of the authors life is unknown?
I say 20 years is plenty. Period. no until death, nothin. Publish it, and you ahve 20 years to continue to publish it without competition.
Shit, thats quite a bit longer than the VAST MAJORITY of most works are ever in print anyway. Ditto for prints of art works.
Are there artists and authors whose works don't end up being profitable till long after they have been out 20 years? Sure... but they are most certainly the exceptions, we need to optimise for the general case.... not make a system that is profitable for every minor outlier and strange situation that we can imagine.
heh just because it isn't modded funny, doesn't mean it wasn't a joke.
Shit, I think I have been modded up to +5 informative on a joke before.
If slashdot has taught me anything, its that all you have to do to impress people is sit down and write bullshit. It doesn't just fool high school english teachers anymore.
(what? I passed the essay quiz? I didn't even read the book!)
but yah, it was a joke son, yer supposed to laugh.
And what makes you think laws and even constitutions can't be changed.
What makes you think that all actors within the government, even today, act through above ground legal channels?
The simple fact is, once the information is out there, it is out there. Come revolutions, come secret police, come criminal organizations.
I came to the realisation the other day that just no good could come from posting my social networks online and cancelled my myspace and friendster accounts.
Its a danger to me from connection with everyone that I know, and should I be affiliated with anything someone dislikes, a danger to all of my friends through me.
Not cool, and not worth the only marginal fun that comes from using myspace.
Not to mention that all the extended network bullshit is just that...bullshit. Because every account starts with that "tom" dude as a friend... and so everybody is in your extended network because some dickhead in every network hasn't dropped him.
Or maybe everybody really is connected that well... but I doubt it.
you could just do what I do and stop giving a shit what people think.
Its your laptop, you have every right to have "White Power" blaring out of the speakers whenever you please. No reason to be ashamed you fucking racist.
but I was walking around our dev lab and saw what looked like some of accordingthose evil token ring boxes with all the connectors. MUX did they call them?
Anyway... theres still companies with old ass systems still in service. I know it must be used somewhere.
Lets not forget department stores too... they buy a system for the store to run all the cash registers etc, how often do you think they upgrade their systems?
IBM did alot of those systems, alot of them used token ring to communicate between the back office servers (master and failover). Seriously these places have no need to upgrade, the old 386s they bought in the 80s have been running the store just fine for all this time....
When they finnaly do upgrade, they just want something that replaces one part in place, I had a contract once to install brand new pentium 200s running some old PCDOS throwback from the 80s, with token ring and all sorts of other funky hardware.
The ONLY reason for the upgrade... the old hard drives from the 80s wern't big enough to hold all the data they wanted at layaway anymore. Other than that, the system was fine for their purposes.
I will note that recently the supreme court invoked the commerce clause to strike down a federal law as unconstitional for the first time in like 40 years just recently.
They have shown a willingess to pretty much say that ANYTHING you do could have an effect on interstate commerce.
Sadly this means that the limitation of powers is essentially null and void and the only way to strike these down is to find that they are contrary to something else.... because the commerce clause has now been interpreted to mean the gov can pretty much do anything... and the 9th ammendment aparently has little to no meaning either.
Your absolutly correct... that was way oversimplistic.
What we really need is for them to scale the large deposits so that everybodies ending balance is the same as the current richest person in the country.
Then when the price of everything goes up with the new huge supply of money, and increased demand on basically everything, we can begin to fuck up the wealth distribution again through usury and wage slavery all over again.
Thanks.... I bet that explains too why I never had a problem with the appliance module, it doesn't do that. Yah I had forgotten about that alternate method of using them... makes perfect sense.
After you said that, it reminded me that I had this problem before, not exactly, but there was some device that I had attached that had odd behavior due to that leakage.
Wish I could remember, but I have used this X-10 stuff on and off for years.
In my eyes thats gonna be the downfall, I mean... I like beer just fine, especially good beers, mostly ales though, not a huge lager fan. Especially not a pilsner fan. Give me a nice high percentage trappist beer any day of the week. Whoever said organized religion never did anything worthwhile... maybe its the only thing, but hey beer is a good start (actually, they make cheese too)
But scotch. I somehow doubt that a "synthahol" (or benzo based drink) to simulate good scotch will be quite far off, especially since at least some of the flavor from these comes from alcohols other than ethanol (cogners and high alcohols) which of course, in addition to being contributors to the intoxication, are usually more toxic than ethanol.
Now of course, much of the flavor of scotch also comes from the aging process... which isn't kind to molecules like this, and even if you wanted to add them in after you extracted the right chemicals from the wood... add them to what? Its the alcohol that extracts out the flavors.
Now... add that to what a bad idea mixing your cns depressants can be. Are these newer benzos going to be safer to mix with real alcohol than the current ones people use? Or does that mean if I start drinking synthbeer, I can't switch to scotch later on in the evening? or vice versa?
I mean, I am all for letting people use what drugs they want and monitor their own use.... but this seems like it could use some research before tossing it out in bars as synthahol.
I had a very similar experience. Actually, may have had a different package, but I thought it was something ridiculously cheap like the firecracker serial port RF module, reciever for the same (which was also a lamp module) and another light module for like $5 but maybe it was more and I just misremember.
I went out and got an appliance module because the lamp modules don't work so well for some things (I think it was the air conditioner? or maybe a flourecent light)
Oddly enough, the batteries died in my remote after quite a while of use (thats reight, the package had a remote too), and I moved, and stopped using it.
Just a week ago I got tired of the lighting situation in my room, and put my trusty old lamp over where it could make a nice soft source of indirect light....and plugged the module in so I could use it from bed like I used to....
Only problem,... the RF module sounds like it uses a relay (like the appliance one, the lamp one makes no sound), but... now I use compact flourecent bulbs... it turns on and off... but the light flashes when its off.
Very weird. All night long though, every few seconds a very dim flash.
The fact is that the same process produced both. Both will be in the pool.
Its not so much about being 471 or 417, its about being capable of being run that fast. Some can handle it, some can't. Its like CPUs, the processors come off the assemply line, and are tested at various speeds.
Some can run at the highest speeds, some don't, but run fine at a lower clock rate... so they test em, mark em, and toss em into their respective bins based on testing.
Thats one reason overclocking has worked so well, sure you can push the chips faster than they were tested for, but at some point they become unstable, so you throttle back to where it works.
Basically overclockers are redoing the cpu frequency testing that the vendor did and determining their own clock freq. Albeit, with more granularity to the test, but.... probably alot less sophistication.
Anyway, even if the samples were random, these same ratings could and would show up. Thats the real problem with this test that toms hardware is doing. Any random chip could work at 471 or 417 or even 400 or 500 (feel free to substitute those for actually possible numbers, i am no overclocker).
The only way to fairly "catch" this would be to take say... 100 store bought, and 100 from the review process. If the chips bought from the store range from say 390-480, but not a single chip from the reviewer fell lower than 450.... then its pretty obvious.
N=1 studies are fundamentally flawed. Sad, it would be nice if someone really did do this properly. Any one of the store bought chips could be at the high end or low end of the spectrum. Without doing a seires of tests on different chips, there is no way.
Also... main boards and CPUs? They should be swapping which module is in which "identical machine" and redoing each test too... that way they can cancel out all of these exact same quality differences between manafactured chips that exist in every chip in the main board and in the CPU.
Do the complete set of tests twice, once in each machine... then repeat that for 10 different store bought and 10 different ones sent to review... thats 40 tests per chip model per manafacturer.... THEN they will have something worth saying.
The point is, it doesn't matter what the review was about, or what the user was doing. The reviewer of a product is taking the product, using it, or performing tests on it, and then using the information to inform the public, the consumers.
To really do that, they have to have sample of the product that is representative of what you can buy in the store. Its not like you could go out and buy a new memory stick from a retail store that was tested out and deemed to be the best of the best. You buy one that tested out to be "within spec".
The fact is, if... IF they are right, and the RAM manafacturer is testing the ram to a higher standard, and then sending them to reviewers, then they are essentially asking a reviewer to review a product thats not actually available to consumers, and passing it off as one that is (that is ram, tested to a lower standard)
That means they are not only being dishonest, but tricking an independant third party into shilling for them.
And fundamentally I have no problem with key escrow as a concept.
Key escrow is great for a number of situations. WHat I object to is the idea of mandatory third party key escrow being built into a system that a user is expected to buy and use for his own purposes, yet allows this third party to recover the keys and break his privacy.
Key escrow is fine, when it is voluntary, and when the parties involved may choose the party or parties who are able to recover the keys. Key escrow is not fine when its an attempt to give the government or some corperation a wholesale backdoor into peoples communications.
Its just not responsible to build a back door into a system and then sell it to other people. This sort of thing should be well documented and completly under control of the purchaser/user of the system.
Yup they will.... but its good to know that someone had the good sense to blow the whistle. Its too bad more people don't do the right thing instead of looking the other way.
In any case, the underlying problem is that we, the populace of "cyberspace" (yes I was just rereading Barlow's Delcaration) have been lax. Its what 2006? How long have we had PGP? Openssl? Why is there a single unencrypted packet leaving any of our machines? Why is there a single server on the internet accepting unencrypted connections?
The answers are simple. Laziness, complacency, and a general disregard for our own rights to privacy. The fact is that we have the technology, the power to stop them from even being able to do this in the first place.
Its time for a change... who is up for patching firfox to no longer do http at all in favor of nothing but https? IS your smtp server doing TLS? If not... why not? Fix it man! Still using telnet... turn it off.
And while we are at it... why are there still only about 400 tor servers? Come on, I run one that does 1 GB of bandwith a day... there have to be more people with bandwith to spare. The 28-31 GB/mo of bandwith that I donate to tor doesn't even cost me anything, its already included in the cost of my colocation.... its just my unused. Surely I am not the only one with an extra 30 GB/mo?
Its time to stop complaining about AT&T and the NSA... didn't we know from the start that neither governments nor large corperations can be expected to care about defending our rights? Rights are not granted... they are TAKEN! Lets take them!
Yup, I don't think that they have missed a single opportunity to suckle at the cock of big buisness.
Lets not forget to add to that list no bid sweetheart deal contracts for hailburton. Installing a big oil consultant as head of afghanistan, tax cuts, defeating net neutrality... doesn't seem to matter the issue, as long as it doesn't mean a bare breast on TV big buisness can just have its way.
except for the fact that there is no reason to think the NSA needs to use or reverse engineer them. In all likelyhood the NSA developed this tech before they did, and has, in fact, been using it for some time now.
The NSA isn't exactly in the buisness of sharing their toys. At least, I don't think so, they still have a secret charter don't they? Other than the SELinux stuff, I can't think of much thats really come out of them.
Besides... their job is to use industrial espionage and intelligence gathering to make the world safe for global buisness interests. Why don't you trust them? You are using a clipper chip for all your encryption right?
I would argue that the current situation is silly regulation by a percieved majority.
Basically yes its true, the ratings are voluntary. At least in name. In truth, they are voluntary in the way that paying your mortgage is voluntary; sure you are free to not pay it, but if you don't, then the bank is going to take your house away and sell it to someone else. Entirely voluntary no?
Why? Well how did this voluntary regulation come about? Basically congress threatened legislation, which may or may not have passed, and may or may not have turned out constitutional. However, if it did, then retailers and producers would most probably be legally liable if the regulations were broken.
So basically, essentially a law was passed, without due process, and without the real force of law. However, as far as you and I are concerned, it may as well be a law. Guess what, now you can't even go buy a fucking video game without carring ID... its bad enough I need ID to get into bars in this supposedly free country (hell I practically started leaving my ID at the hotel while I was in france, I needed it all of twice in 2 weeks of traveling and going out every day/night)
I agree wholeheartedly with other posters, if the kid has money, either through extreme saving or through hsi own blood sweat and tears selling his livelyhood as a wage slave, he deserves the full purchasing power of the money in his hand.
Frankly fuck all these "good parent but" whatifs... if your such a good parent, and there are things at the mall that you don't want your 13 year old buying with the money you may know he has.... then why the fuck is he even at the store without you?
I am so tired of having to trot out my papers all the time. Its ridiculous. It isn't actually protecting anyone from anything except a few parents overactive imaginations.
It sounds like I am in denial because I am indeed denying that I am an addict. It always sounds like denial because thats what it is. It isn't true and I am denying it.
Saying I am an addict would imply that I want to stop, or feel I need to stop or that this is, in and of itself, having some negative impact on my life.
You will note that I said nothing of the frequency of any of my drug use. Yah I drink coffee daily... I also "decaffinate" and do periods of low or no caffiene for weeks on end. I do this on purpose. To manage my tolerance level and decrease the negative impact of caffiene on my system.
As much as I feel sympathy for the events of your life, it sounds like your fammily have been some extreme cases. The fact is that the vast majority of drug users, alcohol and otherwise, are not extreme cases. Most will not die of drug or alcohol related issues, most will not "ruin their lives" due to addiction.
I am sorry your family members had such a rough time and put you through one... but you frankly don't know me or my habbits. I talk openly and honestly with my doctor about my habbits, and frankly, when he tells me he thinks theres an issue, I will listen.
Should I smoke less and drink less? SMoke less definitly. Drink less, maybe. Are they issues that are really having an impact on my life? No. not really. I should probably practice outside of class too, and spend less time posting on slashdot. Theres alot of things I should do.
Your welcome to your own opinion, but until such time as you have real knowledge about my life, and what I do beyond my own description of a few of my bahavioural patterns, I would thank you to excuse me if I don't put too much stock in your assessment.
and my western mind with its cursory training in science and western medicine, has real issues with some of their models.
I cringe every time someone mentions "chi" for example.
However, the techniques are still valid, even if the model that they are using to describe how it works is kinda silly and doesn't really fit the current understandings of the body.
So yah... when I punch you near the armpit, I am not constricting your chi and damaging some "lung" chi pathway... I am smashing the nerves and veins that control your muscles and supply them with oxygen.
The effect is still the same... it still shoots an odd sensation into your arm and leaves it mostly immobile temporarily (depending on the extent of the damage of course).
DOes it really matter if I constricted your chi or damaged a nerve? Not really, as long as you have been convinced that continuing your assault on me is a bad idea... I have met my purpose.
I didn't say religion was always an addiction. Neither are drugs or porn. However, I don't think that just because relgions (usually) try to preach a positive message means that they can't be destructive to an individual.
I have also noticed that the friend of mine who was the strongest into drugs and all manner of other "addictive behaviours", was also the person who most strongly filled his life with religion when he had to end all that.
Coincidence? Maybe, but its a pattern that I have noticed several times in life. I really do think that the concept of the "addictive personality" carries alot of weight.
I don't disagree but... the thing is he says the same thing.
Sure I often initiate the bitching, but he agrees with me completly.
Honestly I go up to his room and he plays WoW all the time, I have to go up there just to spend time with him, and hes one o fmy oldest friends in the world...
then he turns to me (frequently) and says "I don't know why I play this game". He admits its not really fun, but its taken the place of other social activities because its easy... you click its on...
Other social activities are only easy when they are happening and you can just go... when they arn't you have to call people and set them up and... its more work, and sometimes very hard.
I mean shit I hate being around people all the time, I need my "me time", and I like getting it fairly often. However, we are social animals... spending time with people is a very good thing.
Frankly it bothers me that the most talked about aspect of porn is whether kids see it. I think thats the least of anyones worries. Kids see porn, it doesn't harm them.
In fact its a moot point as to whether it does, because they see it and have seen it since it existed. Porn is also what you make of it... talk to someone who has lived in an Islamic country (I have a good friend who lived in Iran for many years)... there a woman in a buisness suit is practically porn.
Or my experience in France. There were hot girls on the beaches with tops off and I loved it. After a few days I noticed that there were entire fammilies, with 3 generations of women, from an old grandmother to a young 5 year old, all topless together on the beach....
by that point I felt dirty that I even noticed the topless girls.
It really made me think what prudes we americans are. Yah seeing naked human bodies desensitzes us to seeing naked human bodies... so what? Naked human bodies are something we all have, maybe we shouldn't go around hiding them so much and basically making them seem so important and mysterious and rare.
Honestly, I think alot of the problems surrounding sexuality in our culture come very directly from us treating sex and sexual imagry like such a taboo thing. Its this concept of "decency" that really makes things so indecent.
a) there are "hardcore" porn mags b) there is plenty of "soft core" porn on the web
Shit in addition to playboy (which I found at about 9), around the time I was 12 I found a bootleg copy of a movie that was mostly normal sex with thin plot, but towards the end involved a man being tied up and anally raped with a corn cob by a couple of sadistic women.
It was just one scene, and a short one (it was more part of the flimsy excuse of a plot than a real attempt at some sort of BDSM scene). However, honestly, it had almost no effect on my or my view of human sexuality at all... it was so beyond the scope of experiences I could relate to, that it was just a curiosity.... and not even much of one.
I dunno, as our hormones start changing us and awakening those animal desires, I think its natural for us to be curious and porn definitly plays a role in that curiosity.
You would think porn would be more encouraged, afterall, don't we not want kids channelling their sexual energy into eachother? They have to do something with it. So they see some images and jerk off. Isn't that better than trying to convince suzy down the road to spread her legs?
Honestly I wonder how useful it even is to discuss. I mean, are there really people who think that it would even be possible to prevent kids from growing up without seeing porn?
I know its a natural instinct of parents to want to "protect" their children from all harm, imagined or otherwise. I just wish the breeders out there would be more willing to take a step back and ask themselves whether the dangers they see are even real.
Just because someone says its "for the children" doesn't mean that what they want to do is helpful, or even not harmful to those same children.
Religion exists because it fills a need that people have. I am not a believer in any God and tend to turn to the more atheistic belief systems, almost comfortable calling myself some manner of buddhist these days.
Actually, I really think study of martial arts, even in just the few months that I have been back into it (I studied many years ago as a teenager for a year or so), has been very instructive at developing self discipline, which is another way of saying the same things, to my mind.
Learning to control the body, requires that you control your mind. Sure the actions are physical, however, you quickly learn that its also very much mental.
Getting into "T position", twisting your body, extending your arms straight out to the sides and trying to reach and extend them out... this is a physical position requiring muscle coordination to get into. However to hold that position for a count of 100 seconds.... that is very much mental.
When your muscles tire, when they start to shake uncontrollably, its not physical strength or agility that keeps you from falling over or raising up to a higher stance, its sheer force of will.
Of course, much like it is easier for a person in church to go through his parayers with a priest standing at the podium and leading him. Its much easier to find that mental focus when you have an instructor urging you on and encouraging you to overcome.
As he says "I know its hard to practice outside of class, when I started I didn't practice outside of class either, it takes a long time to develop the discipline". Its true... in class I can move and really work my body for 20, 30, even 60 minutes sometimes (often the warmup is 20-30 then 30 mins of self defense drills, but sometimes we go a full hour and a half with a long warmup and form practice)....
at home... I am lucky to get a 5 to 10 minute half assed workout in.
In class I can hold the aforementioned T position for 60 to 70 seconds and then switch to the other side and do it again. At home, I have fallen over after 20 to 30 seconds on one side.
I am getting better though. Who was it in Yellow Submarine that kept saying "its all in the head"?
Slashdot Mirror
however, murder is already illegal. conspiracy to commit murder, even more so.
A better solution, why should copyright even last until the authors death. What if the state of the authors life is unknown?
I say 20 years is plenty. Period. no until death, nothin. Publish it, and you ahve 20 years to continue to publish it without competition.
Shit, thats quite a bit longer than the VAST MAJORITY of most works are ever in print anyway. Ditto for prints of art works.
Are there artists and authors whose works don't end up being profitable till long after they have been out 20 years? Sure... but they are most certainly the exceptions, we need to optimise for the general case.... not make a system that is profitable for every minor outlier and strange situation that we can imagine.
-Steve
heh just because it isn't modded funny, doesn't mean it wasn't a joke.
Shit, I think I have been modded up to +5 informative on a joke before.
If slashdot has taught me anything, its that all you have to do to impress people is sit down and write bullshit. It doesn't just fool high school english teachers anymore.
(what? I passed the essay quiz? I didn't even read the book!)
but yah, it was a joke son, yer supposed to laugh.
-Steve
And what makes you think laws and even constitutions can't be changed.
What makes you think that all actors within the government, even today, act through above ground legal channels?
The simple fact is, once the information is out there, it is out there. Come revolutions, come secret police, come criminal organizations.
I came to the realisation the other day that just no good could come from posting my social networks online and cancelled my myspace and friendster accounts.
Its a danger to me from connection with everyone that I know, and should I be affiliated with anything someone dislikes, a danger to all of my friends through me.
Not cool, and not worth the only marginal fun that comes from using myspace.
Not to mention that all the extended network bullshit is just that...bullshit. Because every account starts with that "tom" dude as a friend... and so everybody is in your extended network because some dickhead in every network hasn't dropped him.
Or maybe everybody really is connected that well... but I doubt it.
-Steve
you could just do what I do and stop giving a shit what people think.
Its your laptop, you have every right to have "White Power" blaring out of the speakers whenever you please. No reason to be ashamed you fucking racist.
-Steve
you would like to think...
but I was walking around our dev lab and saw what looked like some of accordingthose evil token ring boxes with all the connectors. MUX did they call them?
Anyway... theres still companies with old ass systems still in service. I know it must be used somewhere.
Lets not forget department stores too... they buy a system for the store to run all the cash registers etc, how often do you think they upgrade their systems?
IBM did alot of those systems, alot of them used token ring to communicate between the back office servers (master and failover). Seriously these places have no need to upgrade, the old 386s they bought in the 80s have been running the store just fine for all this time....
When they finnaly do upgrade, they just want something that replaces one part in place, I had a contract once to install brand new pentium 200s running some old PCDOS throwback from the 80s, with token ring and all sorts of other funky hardware.
The ONLY reason for the upgrade... the old hard drives from the 80s wern't big enough to hold all the data they wanted at layaway anymore. Other than that, the system was fine for their purposes.
-Steve
I will note that recently the supreme court invoked the commerce clause to strike down a federal law as unconstitional for the first time in like 40 years just recently.
They have shown a willingess to pretty much say that ANYTHING you do could have an effect on interstate commerce.
Sadly this means that the limitation of powers is essentially null and void and the only way to strike these down is to find that they are contrary to something else.... because the commerce clause has now been interpreted to mean the gov can pretty much do anything... and the 9th ammendment aparently has little to no meaning either.
-Steve
Your absolutly correct... that was way oversimplistic.
What we really need is for them to scale the large deposits so that everybodies ending balance is the same as the current richest person in the country.
Then when the price of everything goes up with the new huge supply of money, and increased demand on basically everything, we can begin to fuck up the wealth distribution again through usury and wage slavery all over again.
-Steve
Thanks.... I bet that explains too why I never had a problem with the appliance module, it doesn't do that. Yah I had forgotten about that alternate method of using them... makes perfect sense.
After you said that, it reminded me that I had this problem before, not exactly, but there was some device that I had attached that had odd behavior due to that leakage.
Wish I could remember, but I have used this X-10 stuff on and off for years.
-Steve
mmmm scotch.
In my eyes thats gonna be the downfall, I mean... I like beer just fine, especially good beers, mostly ales though, not a huge lager fan. Especially not a pilsner fan. Give me a nice high percentage trappist beer any day of the week. Whoever said organized religion never did anything worthwhile... maybe its the only thing, but hey beer is a good start (actually, they make cheese too)
But scotch. I somehow doubt that a "synthahol" (or benzo based drink) to simulate good scotch will be quite far off, especially since at least some of the flavor from these comes from alcohols other than ethanol (cogners and high alcohols) which of course, in addition to being contributors to the intoxication, are usually more toxic than ethanol.
Now of course, much of the flavor of scotch also comes from the aging process... which isn't kind to molecules like this, and even if you wanted to add them in after you extracted the right chemicals from the wood... add them to what? Its the alcohol that extracts out the flavors.
Now... add that to what a bad idea mixing your cns depressants can be. Are these newer benzos going to be safer to mix with real alcohol than the current ones people use? Or does that mean if I start drinking synthbeer, I can't switch to scotch later on in the evening? or vice versa?
I mean, I am all for letting people use what drugs they want and monitor their own use.... but this seems like it could use some research before tossing it out in bars as synthahol.
-Steve
I had a very similar experience. Actually, may have had a different package, but I thought it was something ridiculously cheap like the firecracker serial port RF module, reciever for the same (which was also a lamp module) and another light module for like $5 but maybe it was more and I just misremember.
I went out and got an appliance module because the lamp modules don't work so well for some things (I think it was the air conditioner? or maybe a flourecent light)
Oddly enough, the batteries died in my remote after quite a while of use (thats reight, the package had a remote too), and I moved, and stopped using it.
Just a week ago I got tired of the lighting situation in my room, and put my trusty old lamp over where it could make a nice soft source of indirect light....and plugged the module in so I could use it from bed like I used to....
Only problem,... the RF module sounds like it uses a relay (like the appliance one, the lamp one makes no sound), but... now I use compact flourecent bulbs... it turns on and off... but the light flashes when its off.
Very weird. All night long though, every few seconds a very dim flash.
going to try the appliance module on it.
-Steve
Well sorta....
The fact is that the same process produced both. Both will be in the pool.
Its not so much about being 471 or 417, its about being capable of being run that fast. Some can handle it, some can't. Its like CPUs, the processors come off the assemply line, and are tested at various speeds.
Some can run at the highest speeds, some don't, but run fine at a lower clock rate... so they test em, mark em, and toss em into their respective bins based on testing.
Thats one reason overclocking has worked so well, sure you can push the chips faster than they were tested for, but at some point they become unstable, so you throttle back to where it works.
Basically overclockers are redoing the cpu frequency testing that the vendor did and determining their own clock freq. Albeit, with more granularity to the test, but.... probably alot less sophistication.
Anyway, even if the samples were random, these same ratings could and would show up. Thats the real problem with this test that toms hardware is doing. Any random chip could work at 471 or 417 or even 400 or 500 (feel free to substitute those for actually possible numbers, i am no overclocker).
The only way to fairly "catch" this would be to take say... 100 store bought, and 100 from the review process. If the chips bought from the store range from say 390-480, but not a single chip from the reviewer fell lower than 450.... then its pretty obvious.
N=1 studies are fundamentally flawed. Sad, it would be nice if someone really did do this properly. Any one of the store bought chips could be at the high end or low end of the spectrum. Without doing a seires of tests on different chips, there is no way.
Also... main boards and CPUs? They should be swapping which module is in which "identical machine" and redoing each test too... that way they can cancel out all of these exact same quality differences between manafactured chips that exist in every chip in the main board and in the CPU.
Do the complete set of tests twice, once in each machine... then repeat that for 10 different store bought and 10 different ones sent to review... thats 40 tests per chip model per manafacturer.... THEN they will have something worth saying.
-Steve
I do, its not about that, your missing the point.
The point is, it doesn't matter what the review was about, or what the user was doing. The reviewer of a product is taking the product, using it, or performing tests on it, and then using the information to inform the public, the consumers.
To really do that, they have to have sample of the product that is representative of what you can buy in the store. Its not like you could go out and buy a new memory stick from a retail store that was tested out and deemed to be the best of the best. You buy one that tested out to be "within spec".
The fact is, if... IF they are right, and the RAM manafacturer is testing the ram to a higher standard, and then sending them to reviewers, then they are essentially asking a reviewer to review a product thats not actually available to consumers, and passing it off as one that is (that is ram, tested to a lower standard)
That means they are not only being dishonest, but tricking an independant third party into shilling for them.
-Steve
It was a joke, but half serious.
And fundamentally I have no problem with key escrow as a concept.
Key escrow is great for a number of situations. WHat I object to is the idea of mandatory third party key escrow being built into a system that a user is expected to buy and use for his own purposes, yet allows this third party to recover the keys and break his privacy.
Key escrow is fine, when it is voluntary, and when the parties involved may choose the party or parties who are able to recover the keys. Key escrow is not fine when its an attempt to give the government or some corperation a wholesale backdoor into peoples communications.
Its just not responsible to build a back door into a system and then sell it to other people. This sort of thing should be well documented and completly under control of the purchaser/user of the system.
-Steve
Yup they will.... but its good to know that someone had the good sense to blow the whistle. Its too bad more people don't do the right thing instead of looking the other way.
In any case, the underlying problem is that we, the populace of "cyberspace" (yes I was just rereading Barlow's Delcaration) have been lax. Its what 2006? How long have we had PGP? Openssl? Why is there a single unencrypted packet leaving any of our machines? Why is there a single server on the internet accepting unencrypted connections?
The answers are simple. Laziness, complacency, and a general disregard for our own rights to privacy. The fact is that we have the technology, the power to stop them from even being able to do this in the first place.
Its time for a change... who is up for patching firfox to no longer do http at all in favor of nothing but https? IS your smtp server doing TLS? If not... why not? Fix it man! Still using telnet... turn it off.
And while we are at it... why are there still only about 400 tor servers? Come on, I run one that does 1 GB of bandwith a day... there have to be more people with bandwith to spare. The 28-31 GB/mo of bandwith that I donate to tor doesn't even cost me anything, its already included in the cost of my colocation.... its just my unused. Surely I am not the only one with an extra 30 GB/mo?
Its time to stop complaining about AT&T and the NSA... didn't we know from the start that neither governments nor large corperations can be expected to care about defending our rights? Rights are not granted... they are TAKEN! Lets take them!
-Steve
Yup, I don't think that they have missed a single opportunity to suckle at the cock of big buisness.
Lets not forget to add to that list no bid sweetheart deal contracts for hailburton. Installing a big oil consultant as head of afghanistan, tax cuts, defeating net neutrality... doesn't seem to matter the issue, as long as it doesn't mean a bare breast on TV big buisness can just have its way.
-Steve
except for the fact that there is no reason to think the NSA needs to use or reverse engineer them. In all likelyhood the NSA developed this tech before they did, and has, in fact, been using it for some time now.
The NSA isn't exactly in the buisness of sharing their toys. At least, I don't think so, they still have a secret charter don't they? Other than the SELinux stuff, I can't think of much thats really come out of them.
Besides... their job is to use industrial espionage and intelligence gathering to make the world safe for global buisness interests. Why don't you trust them? You are using a clipper chip for all your encryption right?
-Steve
Shit, why are you bothering me? _I_ knew that.
I would argue that the current situation is silly regulation by a percieved majority.
Basically yes its true, the ratings are voluntary. At least in name. In truth, they are voluntary in the way that paying your mortgage is voluntary; sure you are free to not pay it, but if you don't, then the bank is going to take your house away and sell it to someone else. Entirely voluntary no?
Why? Well how did this voluntary regulation come about? Basically congress threatened legislation, which may or may not have passed, and may or may not have turned out constitutional. However, if it did, then retailers and producers would most probably be legally liable if the regulations were broken.
So basically, essentially a law was passed, without due process, and without the real force of law. However, as far as you and I are concerned, it may as well be a law. Guess what, now you can't even go buy a fucking video game without carring ID... its bad enough I need ID to get into bars in this supposedly free country (hell I practically started leaving my ID at the hotel while I was in france, I needed it all of twice in 2 weeks of traveling and going out every day/night)
I agree wholeheartedly with other posters, if the kid has money, either through extreme saving or through hsi own blood sweat and tears selling his livelyhood as a wage slave, he deserves the full purchasing power of the money in his hand.
Frankly fuck all these "good parent but" whatifs... if your such a good parent, and there are things at the mall that you don't want your 13 year old buying with the money you may know he has.... then why the fuck is he even at the store without you?
I am so tired of having to trot out my papers all the time. Its ridiculous. It isn't actually protecting anyone from anything except a few parents overactive imaginations.
-Steve
It sounds like I am in denial because I am indeed denying that I am an addict. It always sounds like denial because thats what it is. It isn't true and I am denying it.
Saying I am an addict would imply that I want to stop, or feel I need to stop or that this is, in and of itself, having some negative impact on my life.
You will note that I said nothing of the frequency of any of my drug use. Yah I drink coffee daily... I also "decaffinate" and do periods of low or no caffiene for weeks on end. I do this on purpose. To manage my tolerance level and decrease the negative impact of caffiene on my system.
As much as I feel sympathy for the events of your life, it sounds like your fammily have been some extreme cases. The fact is that the vast majority of drug users, alcohol and otherwise, are not extreme cases. Most will not die of drug or alcohol related issues, most will not "ruin their lives" due to addiction.
I am sorry your family members had such a rough time and put you through one... but you frankly don't know me or my habbits. I talk openly and honestly with my doctor about my habbits, and frankly, when he tells me he thinks theres an issue, I will listen.
Should I smoke less and drink less? SMoke less definitly. Drink less, maybe. Are they issues that are really having an impact on my life? No. not really. I should probably practice outside of class too, and spend less time posting on slashdot. Theres alot of things I should do.
Your welcome to your own opinion, but until such time as you have real knowledge about my life, and what I do beyond my own description of a few of my bahavioural patterns, I would thank you to excuse me if I don't put too much stock in your assessment.
-Steve
and my western mind with its cursory training in science and western medicine, has real issues with some of their models.
I cringe every time someone mentions "chi" for example.
However, the techniques are still valid, even if the model that they are using to describe how it works is kinda silly and doesn't really fit the current understandings of the body.
So yah... when I punch you near the armpit, I am not constricting your chi and damaging some "lung" chi pathway... I am smashing the nerves and veins that control your muscles and supply them with oxygen.
The effect is still the same... it still shoots an odd sensation into your arm and leaves it mostly immobile temporarily (depending on the extent of the damage of course).
DOes it really matter if I constricted your chi or damaged a nerve? Not really, as long as you have been convinced that continuing your assault on me is a bad idea... I have met my purpose.
-Steve
I didn't say religion was always an addiction. Neither are drugs or porn. However, I don't think that just because relgions (usually) try to preach a positive message means that they can't be destructive to an individual.
I have also noticed that the friend of mine who was the strongest into drugs and all manner of other "addictive behaviours", was also the person who most strongly filled his life with religion when he had to end all that.
Coincidence? Maybe, but its a pattern that I have noticed several times in life. I really do think that the concept of the "addictive personality" carries alot of weight.
-Steve
I don't disagree but... the thing is he says the same thing.
Sure I often initiate the bitching, but he agrees with me completly.
Honestly I go up to his room and he plays WoW all the time, I have to go up there just to spend time with him, and hes one o fmy oldest friends in the world...
then he turns to me (frequently) and says "I don't know why I play this game". He admits its not really fun, but its taken the place of other social activities because its easy... you click its on...
Other social activities are only easy when they are happening and you can just go... when they arn't you have to call people and set them up and... its more work, and sometimes very hard.
I mean shit I hate being around people all the time, I need my "me time", and I like getting it fairly often. However, we are social animals... spending time with people is a very good thing.
-Steve
Frankly it bothers me that the most talked about aspect of porn is whether kids see it. I think thats the least of anyones worries. Kids see porn, it doesn't harm them.
In fact its a moot point as to whether it does, because they see it and have seen it since it existed. Porn is also what you make of it... talk to someone who has lived in an Islamic country (I have a good friend who lived in Iran for many years)... there a woman in a buisness suit is practically porn.
Or my experience in France. There were hot girls on the beaches with tops off and I loved it. After a few days I noticed that there were entire fammilies, with 3 generations of women, from an old grandmother to a young 5 year old, all topless together on the beach....
by that point I felt dirty that I even noticed the topless girls.
It really made me think what prudes we americans are. Yah seeing naked human bodies desensitzes us to seeing naked human bodies... so what? Naked human bodies are something we all have, maybe we shouldn't go around hiding them so much and basically making them seem so important and mysterious and rare.
Honestly, I think alot of the problems surrounding sexuality in our culture come very directly from us treating sex and sexual imagry like such a taboo thing. Its this concept of "decency" that really makes things so indecent.
-Steve
Thats not always true.
a) there are "hardcore" porn mags
b) there is plenty of "soft core" porn on the web
Shit in addition to playboy (which I found at about 9), around the time I was 12 I found a bootleg copy of a movie that was mostly normal sex with thin plot, but towards the end involved a man being tied up and anally raped with a corn cob by a couple of sadistic women.
It was just one scene, and a short one (it was more part of the flimsy excuse of a plot than a real attempt at some sort of BDSM scene). However, honestly, it had almost no effect on my or my view of human sexuality at all... it was so beyond the scope of experiences I could relate to, that it was just a curiosity.... and not even much of one.
I dunno, as our hormones start changing us and awakening those animal desires, I think its natural for us to be curious and porn definitly plays a role in that curiosity.
You would think porn would be more encouraged, afterall, don't we not want kids channelling their sexual energy into eachother? They have to do something with it. So they see some images and jerk off. Isn't that better than trying to convince suzy down the road to spread her legs?
Honestly I wonder how useful it even is to discuss. I mean, are there really people who think that it would even be possible to prevent kids from growing up without seeing porn?
I know its a natural instinct of parents to want to "protect" their children from all harm, imagined or otherwise. I just wish the breeders out there would be more willing to take a step back and ask themselves whether the dangers they see are even real.
Just because someone says its "for the children" doesn't mean that what they want to do is helpful, or even not harmful to those same children.
-Steve
I agree completly.
Religion exists because it fills a need that people have. I am not a believer in any God and tend to turn to the more atheistic belief systems, almost comfortable calling myself some manner of buddhist these days.
Actually, I really think study of martial arts, even in just the few months that I have been back into it (I studied many years ago as a teenager for a year or so), has been very instructive at developing self discipline, which is another way of saying the same things, to my mind.
Learning to control the body, requires that you control your mind. Sure the actions are physical, however, you quickly learn that its also very much mental.
Getting into "T position", twisting your body, extending your arms straight out to the sides and trying to reach and extend them out... this is a physical position requiring muscle coordination to get into. However to hold that position for a count of 100 seconds.... that is very much mental.
When your muscles tire, when they start to shake uncontrollably, its not physical strength or agility that keeps you from falling over or raising up to a higher stance, its sheer force of will.
Of course, much like it is easier for a person in church to go through his parayers with a priest standing at the podium and leading him. Its much easier to find that mental focus when you have an instructor urging you on and encouraging you to overcome.
As he says "I know its hard to practice outside of class, when I started I didn't practice outside of class either, it takes a long time to develop the discipline". Its true... in class I can move and really work my body for 20, 30, even 60 minutes sometimes (often the warmup is 20-30 then 30 mins of self defense drills, but sometimes we go a full hour and a half with a long warmup and form practice)....
at home... I am lucky to get a 5 to 10 minute half assed workout in.
In class I can hold the aforementioned T position for 60 to 70 seconds and then switch to the other side and do it again. At home, I have fallen over after 20 to 30 seconds on one side.
I am getting better though. Who was it in Yellow Submarine that kept saying "its all in the head"?
-Steve