This lesson was only first learned what? 30 years ago? Do people really expect that little band-aids here and there will be able to fix inherently broken crap?
On my computer, you can't rely on naything. You can't ever be sure that the code you want to be running is, or that code you don't want to be running isn't.
If you don't want people cheating, then don't send the client extra information (like the positions of other players) that can be used to cheat.
Its the network protocol thats broken, the game thats broken, not the video hardware or drivers here.
Is i tharder to write "more secure" protcols? Hell yea it is. Can it take more server end resources and more bandwidth? hell yea it can.
However, if you want to compromise security for speed, ease or server side resources, then don't bitch abou tthe consequenses.
Even after you fix all that, you still can't stop "line of sight" cheating. You still can't stop a bot from being written to play for a person. Some things are just not fixable problems.
Any program designed to stop cheaters is flawed. Flawed because they can "break" it. Once its broken, the new cheats will proliferate. Its whack-a-mole!
Having perfectly reasonable features removed from hardware by the manafacturer to "protect" inhgerently broken software from cheaters is absolutly silly.
If people want to cheat, then they will cheat. So what? Its just a game, get over it. Setup private servers and play there. Otherwise, put up with it.
I hate to be abrasive about this but, its fucking silly. This is a moronic issue. The idiots have won! That pisses me off. A completely useless victory! Yeah!
In fact, to me personally, that ranks as a much greater reward than any money.
However, I was talking from a completely economic perspective. Come up with a working buisness model based around something viable, and it makes profit.
If profit is not you goal, then you can do other things. If you have a surplus of money already from elsewhere, then you can afford to drive something else with it.
My point was that if you have profit, then why does the profit that someone else makes matter?
Which is only a concern if you are unable to make enough money to stay in buisness, continue operations, and make enouhg profit that you can maintain a comfortable standard of living.
After that ha sbeen obtained, I don't see why the dollars that a competitor gets are such a problem.
In short, I was disagreeing with the idea that "making more than your competiotors" was a reward. If making more than them still doesn't put you in the black, then its still not helping.
No matter what, the actual amount of money that a competitor makes, in relation to you, is irrelevant. Its how much you make that matters.
I dunno, its just comments. I put funny little things in comments all the time. Makes the code a bit more enjoyable to read.
Speaking of, as someone complained at last years Usenix, I have decided to take up the cause. All code must have Haiku! It doesn't have to be good haiku, or even relevant haiku, but the practise of putting it in comments seems to have died out in recent years, so I want to bring it back!
hmmm and "we are fucked if we get here" (with your favorite commenting char(s) in front (I like # myself)) doesn't worry me - sounds like the start of an error conditional;)
if ($! =~/some really bad error/) {
# We are fucked if we get here
die "Couldn't do some crap $!";
}
Hmmm I have yet to be at a place where management was that clueless, and enforced its cluelesness on its employees AND thought to myself "Gee I want to keep this job".
In fact, when I have worked at such a place (no, I wont name names) I was thinking "Ok, I am gettin gout of here ASAP" and... I did.
Life is too short to work for the clueless. Its also too short to spend too much time doing boring jobs or spend too many hours working.
Oh well, to each their own. So many people work for the clueless, I have to imagine its because they like doing it.
Maybe its just my commie pinko leftist side comming out again, but what do competitors have to do with it?
Profit is the "reward" right? Maybe its just me, but whether you are MORE profitable than someone else or not ranks right up there with having a faster car or a bigger penis. It seems silly to me.
If you make enough profit to stay in buisness and afford to maintain a comfoprtable standard of living, then who cares if someone else is making more?
But back on topic, I agree wrt to patents. If a buisness plan works, then it will make profit, regardless of whether anyone else is doing it. ALL that patents on buiisness processes do is make unviable buisness processes temporarily viable.
I definitly agree here on many points - and I consider myself a supporter of unions too. I would love a union.... a well run one.
A good union is a good thing. However, a poorly run union can be worst than none at all (but, arn't many things that way?).
Take the NYC Stage Hands Union (I forget their actual name). You can only get into the union by being sponsored in. Stanbdard bribe to get sponsored in is around $100,000.
However, once you are in, union regulations make it simple to hold down multiple jobs, none of which take more than a couple of hours out of your day, and all of which pay full time salaries.
(like the regulation that theaters must hire 2 different people, and pay them both full time salaries to wipe down the stage before and after every performance - one for before - one for after)
Now, to me, it sounds like they are corrupt and milking it to hell. However, not all unions are like that, and they certainly don't have to be.
Personally, I think the concept of unions is great. However, like many good concepts (socialism, communism etc), there have been some piss poor implimentations at times, and occasionally implimentors who were less than honest about what they were doing.
As an example, my father tells me the story of being a Union iron worker for a while. His shop went on strike demanding more pay. In the end, the raise that they got was enough to more than pay for the money that they lost in the strike, yup, assuming they all continued working there for the next 40 years anyway.
Thats bad Union management. True, you can't win every time that you go to the table, but the unions job is to represent the workers, and to help them, not to cause them to lose wages, or stick it to the management.
Then again, he talks of the time that a manager was treating him unfairly, giving him a hard time while he tried to do his job. A quick visit to his union rep and the manager changed his tune right quick.
In short, a well run union, one that is run by people who truely care and are out for the good of the workers can be a very very good thing (as they say "United we negotiate, divided we beg".
Then again, I work for a university. We don't need it here. Unless there is a major crunch and stuff has to get done now (which happens once in a while, but only if we can't avoid it) we don't work long hours, and the benefits are good (I honestly don't understand being willing to work 50 or more hours a week and get only 2 weeks vacation a year etc - you could not possibly pay me enough to do a job which takes up THAT MUCH of my life - I did it for about 6 months and said "fuck that")
As the old saying goes "Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one". I would suffix that with "and there are plenty of people willing to share them with the world, given the chance".
Katz sticks out like a sore thumb. He actually writes. He is verbose. He doesn't just write a little one or two liner making a comment on what someone else said and pointing you elsewhere. He stands up and says "Heres what I think, and why".
He sets himself up as a target, so people who dislike what he says, stand up and give their opinions (sometimes those are their opinions of him rather than the subject at hand).
Now, thats how it works. On the occasions when other Slashdot editors have done the same, they get the same kinds of criticizems. If someone notices that one of them always posts and comments on the same topic in a certain way, it gets criticized. Thats just how it works, its human nature, you arn't going to change it.
At some point you just have to realise that people, epsecially in groups, are not always rational and polite.
There are those who take advantage of the fact that people don't behave in rational manners, and do things that "don't make sense" to a person who is trying to understand it. They are called "advertisers" or "politicians".
I dlove to asnswert that but... it was long enough ago that I read it that I don't remember.
However, the information was pretty easy to find on the US Copyright office website. In fact, they have a bunch of materials on the suibject of copyright, derivitive works, etc etc.
According to traditional copyright law, a derivitive work is entirely copyright by the original copyright holder.
Of course, its not that simple. Copyright of the derivitive MAY be on the hands of the derivitive producer (eithe rpartially or fully) if certain conditions are met (specifically relating to how substantial the changes are, and how creative they are)
As with most of these laws, no specifics are set. However, it is clear (from my "not a lawyer" reading of the law - which may differ from case law, if there is any) that generally speaking - the original author holds the copyright on derivitives.
-Steve
Re: Follow this thought all the way out...
on
MS VP Speech Online
·
· Score: 1
Easily.
As the changes are modifications to the original, according to traditional copyright law, the newly created program is a "derivitive work" and falls under the copyright of the original copyright holder NOT The person who modified it.
Thats pretty clear from reading over the relevant portions of the law. If you take someone elses work, and modify it, then they still hold the copyright (which is why distribution of a modified work without permission is infringement - THEY hold copyright for the derivitive work!)
Now, thats the general "rule of thumb". The truth is, of course, a bit more complex with verbiage about how substantial and creative the modified work is.
This, much like mandatory licensing for music, is an oft-forgotten part of the law. (ie, ive never seen anyone mention it since i first read about it)
All in all, its a pretty mucky area of law. (then again, which area isn't?)
However, unless I missed a meeting, the instructions still given to juries are that they should vote gui8lty ONLY if there is NO "reasonable doubt".
Posession of tools proves nothing, other than ability. Last I checked, ability to commit a crime is not usually a punishable offence. (the case of "burglary tools excepted of course).
Certainly i don't think it should. Or else perhaps I should be convicted of being able to ride my motorcycle without ahelmet, ot being able to rape that woman that just walked by my office (afterall, I do have the "necissary equipment" to commit the crime)
I am of the opinion that when the law makes an action illegal that is not, in and of itself, a vdirect violation of the rights of another, then the law, itself, is wrong - and is itself a crime against th every people that it claims to protect.
There is nothing morally wrong about owneing or carrying a lockpick. Owning a lockpick, or carrying one does not directly violate anyones rights.
ONLY the use of a lockpick to gain unauthorized access to anothers property violates anyones rights. ANY law which "sets the bar" lower than that standard (or being caught in the act of attempting that act) is an unjust law.
As for pleabargains... it depends. Mostly I do dislike them. What I really dislike though is what a game it all seems. Noone stands up for whats right, its always "what serves me best".
I have thought long about the laws that I have broken (and the ones I break still). I don't break a law unless I feel that the law is wrong.
I like to think, that should I ever be called to answer for my crimes that I would do the right thing, to stand up for whats right. No plea bargains will be accepted. I would admit all evidence in court, and tell the Jury my side - that the law is wrong - then hope for them to do the right thing (it is btw wholly apropriate for the jury to find a person not guilty if they are convinced the law is unjust)
As Thoreau himself said
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Such issues are not light. I put lots of thought to them.
Its a university, and the standard workday is
9-5 with a 1 hour lunch. We don't do that. We are sysadmins and the like - we are all over the map depending on what is going on.
We shoot for the 35 hour work week, since its standard for the institution (and it provides us with time to have real lives outside of work - which IMNSHO is a very important thing)
Sometimes we work more (sometimes some of us work alot more) when there is a real need. However, working much more than 35 hours/week as an average is just too much (40 isn't bad, ive done it at previous jobs).
No time for leisure outside of work AND a full nights sleep (not that I always take advantage of it)? Im sorry, you just can't possibly pay me enough for that.
I don't want my work to be my life. I LIKE leisure time. In fact, if you ask me, leisure time is a much more important factor of "quality of life" than high tech gadgets and lots of money (not that I don't have plenty of either - listening to mp3s on my pjbox as I type this, and waiting for 6 to roll around so I can hop on my motorcycle and ride)
There is a great slogan among motorcyclist commuters (btw a bike is a great commuter vehicle - can carry a hell of alot more things than the average commuter needs every day, is smaller, faster, and more manuverable than a car) "Ride to work, work to ride".
It doesn't just mean that you should ride the bike to work, its a reminder. There is a reason for working - so you can support yourself AND enjoy yourself. If you work so much that you can't ride (or do whatever else you may want), then whats the point?
Well that depends on the tools now doesn't it. Even so, This is really kind of wishy-washy reasoning. Personally, I am of the belief that any such thing should have to be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" (in fact, I think alot of things should have the bar set that high)
I don't think a person should be punished as a professional theif, or as if this was a repeat offence, unless it can be proven that this is the case. Proven as in "See this crime over here, he commited it" not "well see, he could have commited another one"
then again, theirs alot of junk in the legal system that I don't like very much (like the idea that a person can be held in jail for weeks and months before the isue of whether they should be there (ie a trial begins) is even addressed! - not everyone can afford to pay the bail bondsman)
I will have to remember that the next time a friend who is remodeling their house says "You have a crowbar I can borrow to pull the plaster down?" (not that I personally actually own a crowbar, nor has anyone ever asked to borrow one, but - I have used them enough times that this seems REALLY SILLY)
Would you please tell me where I can find a copy of Acroread for GS/OS. I have an Apple IIGS, there is a web browser for the GS... and Acro... oh wait. There is no version.
But of course I can just download the source and port it right? Please, could you point me to the source, I can't seem to find it.
Gee this seems like alot of work to read a simple english text article with no graphics or anything.
Sure would. In fact, one of the more interesting artifacts here is something said by one of the lawyers on one of the mp3 cases a while back (and it wasn't the defence, it was the "other side"s lawyer - thats why it struck me as amazing to hear)
Fair use applies regardless of the source of the work. So it is illegal to put a work up on the web to be downloaded. It is illegal to download it. However, once you have it - fair use applies. Its perfectly legal to watch/listen to it. Perfectly legal to use it as part of a review etc etc.
So much for the "information as property" concept that some people are trying to push. I think thats the most shining example of the fact that this just isn't supported by law.
Frankly, I think the "burglary tools" concept is silly at best. Commiting a burglary with tools is no more or less "wrong" than committing it without tools. In essence, its the same crime, it does the same real harm, why should it not be punished the same?
If anything, the use of such tools shows that a burglar is smarter than the average doorknob.
Why should there be an extra penalty for being a smarter criminal? That offends my senasabilities. There should be an extra penalty for NOT having the proper tools for the job with you.
Any sort of system of punishment should be based on actual harm done and (depending on the crime) malicousness of intent (murder with intent and a car accident that kills someone have similar harms, but are really very different crimes). Not on HOW the person commited the crime.
I see fundamentally no difference between breaking into someones house and killing them with your bare hands, and shooting them in the head with a gun. Either way its murder. Same crime, same punishment. Why should the penalty be more because "he used a tool to commit the crime". Or reverse it...why should the penalty be LESS because a person didn't use a tool?
This is the web afterall. I don't think that the "but its in pdf" was a complaint about pdf specifically, but rather "Not html or plain text", which are both universal, any web browser (with the exception of a few really weird ones, whose names I can't remember) can show html.
This article was a good read, but it was ALL TEXT. There was absolutly no reason to use pdf, ps, TeX, RTF, MS Word Doc, Powerpoint or whatnot. hell, html would have been overkill for the article in question! (it would have required nothing more than <p> and <h1> for the entire article (with maybe a little <em> thrown in.
PDF, PS etc all have their place. Articles posted on the web that are all text or text and simple graphics is NOT one of those places.
I guess not everything that my high school physics teacher said can be assumed true. I will have to correct him the next time I see him (course, I havn't seen him in years but... I expect I will again).
Not the first time I found out one of them was wrong. My Chem teacher once said that the drug "acid" was actually an acid (someone in class asked)... he was wrong too.
In any case...this is the 10th reply telling me that....doesn't anyone read replies before replying to posts?
Very interesting. I will have to mention this to my old physics teacher the next time I see him (I should pay the old school a visit sometime, been years since I graduated).
Ok... the house I grew up in is about 110 years old. Some of the windows are the originals. Perhaps some are apt to forget this but, glass is a liquid (albeit an extremely viscous one). Over time, it pours.
So... if tiny dots are being made in a cube of glass, how long will it be before the glass is distorted enough that they cannot be read?
Sure, it takes half a century or more for glass to pour enough that you can see ripples in a window, but these are TINY dots, litterally "spaced 100 nanometers apart"! thats a hell of alot closer together than you can see - its going to distort enough to make them unreadable much sooner than when the human eye will be able to see the distortion.
This is worrysome mostly due to the size. If your storing 8 TB or more of data, then you are probably going to want that data to be around for a while. If the lifespan of the media is too short, what good is it?
This is great research sure. Perhaps it will lead to real useful data storage that can be used to store massive amounts of information. However, I do somehow doubt that glass is the way to go.
Then again... get 3 or 4 of them, ans setup a raid 5 array across them, that could work. (course, I would supose that would be a RAED array;))
Slashdot Mirror
You can't enforce honesty on a network.
This lesson was only first learned what? 30 years ago? Do people really expect that little band-aids here and there will be able to fix inherently broken crap?
On my computer, you can't rely on naything. You can't ever be sure that the code you want to be running is, or that code you don't want to be running isn't.
If you don't want people cheating, then don't send the client extra information (like the positions of other players) that can be used to cheat.
Its the network protocol thats broken, the game thats broken, not the video hardware or drivers here.
Is i tharder to write "more secure" protcols? Hell yea it is. Can it take more server end resources and more bandwidth? hell yea it can.
However, if you want to compromise security for speed, ease or server side resources, then don't bitch abou tthe consequenses.
Even after you fix all that, you still can't stop "line of sight" cheating. You still can't stop a bot from being written to play for a person. Some things are just not fixable problems.
Any program designed to stop cheaters is flawed. Flawed because they can "break" it. Once its broken, the new cheats will proliferate. Its whack-a-mole!
Having perfectly reasonable features removed from hardware by the manafacturer to "protect" inhgerently broken software from cheaters is absolutly silly.
If people want to cheat, then they will cheat. So what? Its just a game, get over it. Setup private servers and play there. Otherwise, put up with it.
I hate to be abrasive about this but, its fucking silly. This is a moronic issue. The idiots have won! That pisses me off. A completely useless victory! Yeah!
--Steve
Well I completely agree with you.
In fact, to me personally, that ranks as a much greater reward than any money.
However, I was talking from a completely economic perspective. Come up with a working buisness model based around something viable, and it makes profit.
If profit is not you goal, then you can do other things. If you have a surplus of money already from elsewhere, then you can afford to drive something else with it.
My point was that if you have profit, then why does the profit that someone else makes matter?
-Steve
Which is only a concern if you are unable to make enough money to stay in buisness, continue operations, and make enouhg profit that you can maintain a comfortable standard of living.
After that ha sbeen obtained, I don't see why the dollars that a competitor gets are such a problem.
In short, I was disagreeing with the idea that "making more than your competiotors" was a reward. If making more than them still doesn't put you in the black, then its still not helping.
No matter what, the actual amount of money that a competitor makes, in relation to you, is irrelevant. Its how much you make that matters.
-Steve
Heh yea.
;)
/some really bad error/) {
I dunno, its just comments. I put funny little things in comments all the time. Makes the code a bit more enjoyable to read.
Speaking of, as someone complained at last years Usenix, I have decided to take up the cause. All code must have Haiku! It doesn't have to be good haiku, or even relevant haiku, but the practise of putting it in comments seems to have died out in recent years, so I want to bring it back!
hmmm and "we are fucked if we get here" (with your favorite commenting char(s) in front (I like # myself)) doesn't worry me - sounds like the start of an error conditional
if ($! =~
# We are fucked if we get here
die "Couldn't do some crap $!";
}
-Steve
Hmmm I have yet to be at a place where management was that clueless, and enforced its cluelesness on its employees AND thought to myself "Gee I want to keep this job".
In fact, when I have worked at such a place (no, I wont name names) I was thinking "Ok, I am gettin gout of here ASAP" and... I did.
Life is too short to work for the clueless. Its also too short to spend too much time doing boring jobs or spend too many hours working.
Oh well, to each their own. So many people work for the clueless, I have to imagine its because they like doing it.
-Steve
Maybe its just my commie pinko leftist side comming out again, but what do competitors have to do with it?
Profit is the "reward" right? Maybe its just me, but whether you are MORE profitable than someone else or not ranks right up there with having a faster car or a bigger penis. It seems silly to me.
If you make enough profit to stay in buisness and afford to maintain a comfoprtable standard of living, then who cares if someone else is making more?
But back on topic, I agree wrt to patents. If a buisness plan works, then it will make profit, regardless of whether anyone else is doing it. ALL that patents on buiisness processes do is make unviable buisness processes temporarily viable.
I don't see how this is a "good thing".
-Steve
I definitly agree here on many points - and I consider myself a supporter of unions too. I would love a union.... a well run one.
A good union is a good thing. However, a poorly run union can be worst than none at all (but, arn't many things that way?).
Take the NYC Stage Hands Union (I forget their actual name). You can only get into the union by being sponsored in. Stanbdard bribe to get sponsored in is around $100,000.
However, once you are in, union regulations make it simple to hold down multiple jobs, none of which take more than a couple of hours out of your day, and all of which pay full time salaries.
(like the regulation that theaters must hire 2 different people, and pay them both full time salaries to wipe down the stage before and after every performance - one for before - one for after)
Now, to me, it sounds like they are corrupt and milking it to hell. However, not all unions are like that, and they certainly don't have to be.
-Steve
Personally, I think the concept of unions is great. However, like many good concepts (socialism, communism etc), there have been some piss poor implimentations at times, and occasionally implimentors who were less than honest about what they were doing.
As an example, my father tells me the story of being a Union iron worker for a while. His shop went on strike demanding more pay. In the end, the raise that they got was enough to more than pay for the money that they lost in the strike, yup, assuming they all continued working there for the next 40 years anyway.
Thats bad Union management. True, you can't win every time that you go to the table, but the unions job is to represent the workers, and to help them, not to cause them to lose wages, or stick it to the management.
Then again, he talks of the time that a manager was treating him unfairly, giving him a hard time while he tried to do his job. A quick visit to his union rep and the manager changed his tune right quick.
In short, a well run union, one that is run by people who truely care and are out for the good of the workers can be a very very good thing (as they say "United we negotiate, divided we beg".
Then again, I work for a university. We don't need it here. Unless there is a major crunch and stuff has to get done now (which happens once in a while, but only if we can't avoid it) we don't work long hours, and the benefits are good (I honestly don't understand being willing to work 50 or more hours a week and get only 2 weeks vacation a year etc - you could not possibly pay me enough to do a job which takes up THAT MUCH of my life - I did it for about 6 months and said "fuck that")
-Steve
As the old saying goes "Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one". I would suffix that with "and there are plenty of people willing to share them with the world, given the chance".
Katz sticks out like a sore thumb. He actually writes. He is verbose. He doesn't just write a little one or two liner making a comment on what someone else said and pointing you elsewhere. He stands up and says "Heres what I think, and why".
He sets himself up as a target, so people who dislike what he says, stand up and give their opinions (sometimes those are their opinions of him rather than the subject at hand).
Now, thats how it works. On the occasions when other Slashdot editors have done the same, they get the same kinds of criticizems. If someone notices that one of them always posts and comments on the same topic in a certain way, it gets criticized. Thats just how it works, its human nature, you arn't going to change it.
At some point you just have to realise that people, epsecially in groups, are not always rational and polite.
There are those who take advantage of the fact that people don't behave in rational manners, and do things that "don't make sense" to a person who is trying to understand it. They are called "advertisers" or "politicians".
-Steve
I dlove to asnswert that but... it was long enough ago that I read it that I don't remember.
However, the information was pretty easy to find on the US Copyright office website. In fact, they have a bunch of materials on the suibject of copyright, derivitive works, etc etc.
Thats where I came to this understanding.
-Steve
Actually... you apear to have a misunderstanding.
According to traditional copyright law, a derivitive work is entirely copyright by the original copyright holder.
Of course, its not that simple. Copyright of the derivitive MAY be on the hands of the derivitive producer (eithe rpartially or fully) if certain conditions are met (specifically relating to how substantial the changes are, and how creative they are)
As with most of these laws, no specifics are set. However, it is clear (from my "not a lawyer" reading of the law - which may differ from case law, if there is any) that generally speaking - the original author holds the copyright on derivitives.
-Steve
Easily.
As the changes are modifications to the original, according to traditional copyright law, the newly created program is a "derivitive work" and falls under the copyright of the original copyright holder NOT The person who modified it.
Thats pretty clear from reading over the relevant portions of the law. If you take someone elses work, and modify it, then they still hold the copyright (which is why distribution of a modified work without permission is infringement - THEY hold copyright for the derivitive work!)
Now, thats the general "rule of thumb". The truth is, of course, a bit more complex with verbiage about how substantial and creative the modified work is.
This, much like mandatory licensing for music, is an oft-forgotten part of the law. (ie, ive never seen anyone mention it since i first read about it)
All in all, its a pretty mucky area of law. (then again, which area isn't?)
-Steve
However, unless I missed a meeting, the instructions still given to juries are that they should vote gui8lty ONLY if there is NO "reasonable doubt".
Posession of tools proves nothing, other than ability. Last I checked, ability to commit a crime is not usually a punishable offence. (the case of "burglary tools excepted of course).
Certainly i don't think it should. Or else perhaps I should be convicted of being able to ride my motorcycle without ahelmet, ot being able to rape that woman that just walked by my office (afterall, I do have the "necissary equipment" to commit the crime)
-Steve
I am of the opinion that when the law makes an action illegal that is not, in and of itself, a vdirect violation of the rights of another, then the law, itself, is wrong - and is itself a crime against th every people that it claims to protect.
There is nothing morally wrong about owneing or carrying a lockpick. Owning a lockpick, or carrying one does not directly violate anyones rights.
ONLY the use of a lockpick to gain unauthorized access to anothers property violates anyones rights. ANY law which "sets the bar" lower than that standard (or being caught in the act of attempting that act) is an unjust law.
As for pleabargains... it depends. Mostly I do dislike them. What I really dislike though is what a game it all seems. Noone stands up for whats right, its always "what serves me best".
I have thought long about the laws that I have broken (and the ones I break still). I don't break a law unless I feel that the law is wrong.
I like to think, that should I ever be called to answer for my crimes that I would do the right thing, to stand up for whats right. No plea bargains will be accepted. I would admit all evidence in court, and tell the Jury my side - that the law is wrong - then hope for them to do the right thing (it is btw wholly apropriate for the jury to find a person not guilty if they are convinced the law is unjust)
As Thoreau himself said
Such issues are not light. I put lots of thought to them.
-Steve
Well... we have no set work schedual.
Its a university, and the standard workday is
9-5 with a 1 hour lunch. We don't do that. We are sysadmins and the like - we are all over the map depending on what is going on.
We shoot for the 35 hour work week, since its standard for the institution (and it provides us with time to have real lives outside of work - which IMNSHO is a very important thing)
Sometimes we work more (sometimes some of us work alot more) when there is a real need. However, working much more than 35 hours/week as an average is just too much (40 isn't bad, ive done it at previous jobs).
No time for leisure outside of work AND a full nights sleep (not that I always take advantage of it)? Im sorry, you just can't possibly pay me enough for that.
I don't want my work to be my life. I LIKE leisure time. In fact, if you ask me, leisure time is a much more important factor of "quality of life" than high tech gadgets and lots of money (not that I don't have plenty of either - listening to mp3s on my pjbox as I type this, and waiting for 6 to roll around so I can hop on my motorcycle and ride)
There is a great slogan among motorcyclist commuters (btw a bike is a great commuter vehicle - can carry a hell of alot more things than the average commuter needs every day, is smaller, faster, and more manuverable than a car) "Ride to work, work to ride".
It doesn't just mean that you should ride the bike to work, its a reminder. There is a reason for working - so you can support yourself AND enjoy yourself. If you work so much that you can't ride (or do whatever else you may want), then whats the point?
Whoever dies with the most money, still dies.
-Steve
Well that depends on the tools now doesn't it. Even so, This is really kind of wishy-washy reasoning. Personally, I am of the belief that any such thing should have to be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" (in fact, I think alot of things should have the bar set that high)
I don't think a person should be punished as a professional theif, or as if this was a repeat offence, unless it can be proven that this is the case. Proven as in "See this crime over here, he commited it" not "well see, he could have commited another one"
then again, theirs alot of junk in the legal system that I don't like very much (like the idea that a person can be held in jail for weeks and months before the isue of whether they should be there (ie a trial begins) is even addressed! - not everyone can afford to pay the bail bondsman)
-Steve
I will have to remember that the next time a friend who is remodeling their house says "You have a crowbar I can borrow to pull the plaster down?" (not that I personally actually own a crowbar, nor has anyone ever asked to borrow one, but - I have used them enough times that this seems REALLY SILLY)
-Steve
Would you please tell me where I can find a copy of Acroread for GS/OS. I have an Apple IIGS, there is a web browser for the GS... and Acro... oh wait. There is no version.
But of course I can just download the source and port it right? Please, could you point me to the source, I can't seem to find it.
Gee this seems like alot of work to read a simple english text article with no graphics or anything.
-Steve
Sure would. In fact, one of the more interesting artifacts here is something said by one of the lawyers on one of the mp3 cases a while back (and it wasn't the defence, it was the "other side"s lawyer - thats why it struck me as amazing to hear)
Fair use applies regardless of the source of the work. So it is illegal to put a work up on the web to be downloaded. It is illegal to download it. However, once you have it - fair use applies. Its perfectly legal to watch/listen to it. Perfectly legal to use it as part of a review etc etc.
So much for the "information as property" concept that some people are trying to push. I think thats the most shining example of the fact that this just isn't supported by law.
-Steve
Why should the penalty be stiffer?
Frankly, I think the "burglary tools" concept is silly at best. Commiting a burglary with tools is no more or less "wrong" than committing it without tools. In essence, its the same crime, it does the same real harm, why should it not be punished the same?
If anything, the use of such tools shows that a burglar is smarter than the average doorknob.
Why should there be an extra penalty for being a smarter criminal? That offends my senasabilities. There should be an extra penalty for NOT having the proper tools for the job with you.
Any sort of system of punishment should be based on actual harm done and (depending on the crime) malicousness of intent (murder with intent and a car accident that kills someone have similar harms, but are really very different crimes). Not on HOW the person commited the crime.
I see fundamentally no difference between breaking into someones house and killing them with your bare hands, and shooting them in the head with a gun. Either way its murder. Same crime, same punishment. Why should the penalty be more because "he used a tool to commit the crime". Or reverse it...why should the penalty be LESS because a person didn't use a tool?
Its the same crime afterall. Same harm.
-Steve
However, html is even more useful than PDF.
This is the web afterall. I don't think that the "but its in pdf" was a complaint about pdf specifically, but rather "Not html or plain text", which are both universal, any web browser (with the exception of a few really weird ones, whose names I can't remember) can show html.
This article was a good read, but it was ALL TEXT. There was absolutly no reason to use pdf, ps, TeX, RTF, MS Word Doc, Powerpoint or whatnot. hell, html would have been overkill for the article in question! (it would have required nothing more than <p> and <h1> for the entire article (with maybe a little <em> thrown in.
PDF, PS etc all have their place. Articles posted on the web that are all text or text and simple graphics is NOT one of those places.
-Steve
Ahhh funny.
You are the 10th person to reply (real this time, the post before was the 9th and I accidently called him the 10th).
Actually, I have never heard of anything other than "typical glass" being refered to as glass. I have never seen quartz refered to as a glass.
I have heard of "bullet proof glass" (which is a plastic, usually (always?) lexan) but thats it.
Also... ALL of the other 9 replies were correcting me... glass doesn't flow, its a solid. I havew seen the light, I believe them now.
Really...noone reads replies before posting a reply themselves do they?
-Steve
Yup your right.
I guess not everything that my high school physics teacher said can be assumed true. I will have to correct him the next time I see him (course, I havn't seen him in years but... I expect I will again).
Not the first time I found out one of them was wrong. My Chem teacher once said that the drug "acid" was actually an acid (someone in class asked)... he was wrong too.
In any case...this is the 10th reply telling me that....doesn't anyone read replies before replying to posts?
(oh well, I don't always either)
-Steve
Ahhh thanks for the info.
Very interesting. I will have to mention this to my old physics teacher the next time I see him (I should pay the old school a visit sometime, been years since I graduated).
Hmm I wonder if he has an email address.
-Steve
Ok... the house I grew up in is about 110 years old. Some of the windows are the originals. Perhaps some are apt to forget this but, glass is a liquid (albeit an extremely viscous one). Over time, it pours.
;))
So... if tiny dots are being made in a cube of glass, how long will it be before the glass is distorted enough that they cannot be read?
Sure, it takes half a century or more for glass to pour enough that you can see ripples in a window, but these are TINY dots, litterally "spaced 100 nanometers apart"! thats a hell of alot closer together than you can see - its going to distort enough to make them unreadable much sooner than when the human eye will be able to see the distortion.
This is worrysome mostly due to the size. If your storing 8 TB or more of data, then you are probably going to want that data to be around for a while. If the lifespan of the media is too short, what good is it?
This is great research sure. Perhaps it will lead to real useful data storage that can be used to store massive amounts of information. However, I do somehow doubt that glass is the way to go.
Then again... get 3 or 4 of them, ans setup a raid 5 array across them, that could work. (course, I would supose that would be a RAED array
-Steve