The whole point is that the academy does not adhere to the rules of modern mass schooling. The people using it are self-seeking knowledge for their own reasons, not being force-fed the formula needed to pass this week's federally-mandated test. Each person can proceed at their own pace. That's an efficiency that cannot be realized in the modern classroom. Scientific testing is not necessary at this point, partly because there are proven success stories amongst the site's users and partly because the site is not competing for scholastic funding with public schools. Pray that never comes to pass if you (not you personally, you the generic reader of this rant who happens to be a teacher or an 'administrator') want to keep working in the public system, because private schools of nearly every type trounce public schools in every comparison that isn't rigged.
Human beings have been teaching themselves and each other for millenia without benefit of supposedly superior rote methods developed over the last century. They do this by applying a desire to learn with some logic and some language skills. Direct instruction alone falls short, but direct instruction with personal exploration excels. This is what produced our nation's great leaders, not to mention nearly every recognized genius throughout history. Being given free access to one person's explanation of a particular subject is a huge advantage to those teaching themselves, whether because their original education was crap or because their education in progress is crap. It is only one person's take, but there are plenty of other sources available to further investigate topics of interest. Having this many topics together in one place along with practice aids is head and shoulders above simply learning at the library, let alone sitting through forced schooling at the rate of the slowest learner for each and every topic.
Mods: the truth by definition is not a troll. Whether justified or not, environmental groups will take steps to control or completely block actions that involve new mining and refining operations in the US. I may even agree with and support their arguments in this case, but opposition is inevitable. Stating this particular truth in no way implies that environmental preservation is good or bad or that such statements should be modded as troll. Stick to the facts and follow the rules.
This action by China (if it is not a bluff) represents only a temporary shortfall in supply. Prices will rise, fingers will point, other mining operations will start up and China will lose both business and goodwill. All it takes is Japan's willingness to give China the finger and refuse to negotiate trade agreements in parallel with territory and sovereignty issues. On the flip side, Japan might not have the stones to hold out for an international resolution. In that case, China hikes prices and Japan takes the economic hit in part and the rest of the technological world takes up the remaining slack. All this while China gets richer.
Because of this, I find it unlikely that China will actually uphold such an embargo. It would be a threat used as a lever, and a weak one at that. This fits with the reported trigger event, a Chinese national held in Japan. China isn't exactly well-known for caring about their people, but it does give them an opportunity to wave the swagger stick a little. Too much and they risk international repercussions, but just a little bit and nobody other than Japan will remember it next week.
That one case, sure. But what if all the other pending trials used that one case as their anchor and weathered the full storm in court? At $10k per case that could easily rise above $20m.
They do have the money, and they have additional federal funding on top of that. What happens is it gets spent on other things (uniforms, facility improvements). Then Joe Vendor comes along and offers a tidy sum to 'handle' their lunches. Vendor pays for exclusive access, prices to match or exceed existing prices, then cuts their costs by 50% or more by serving crap. People complain but they have a 5+-year contract ironclad, and besides we already spent the money they paid us.
Some places don't do exclusive deals (like my high school). They contracted each weekday to a different local food service company. Tuesdays was pizza by Little Caesars, for instance. You were required to leave the line with every item on the menu, but you were not required to eat it. Aside from the main course, the food was actually pretty ok for bulk canned goods. It was a simple system: [ ] school meal [ ] home meal [ ] second serving.
Why are we offering so much choice that it's possible to eat nothing but junk food? I think that is the real problem, and if it was addressed there would be no need for dietary tracking. I could understand a choice of menus, maybe three, with one being vegetarian and avoiding common allergens. Many of the same benefits of a single menu system would apply, and students would still have a bit of a choice. No complicated tracking required, not even for account management.
First, parent is not a troll. Sabotaging advertised features in hardware that has already been sold is bad. That includes the 'other OS' option too, not just the semi-humorous suggestion of USB ports. The state AG (attorney general) is responsible for acting on customer complaints from people in their state, and they do act if enough complaints are received. Parent's advice is quite rational and should be acted upon by victims of corporate stupidity. If several state AGs are considering lawsuits, you can bet the federal government will take a long look at the situation as well. It's not some horribly complicated software EULA, it's my hardware that I bought that is being broken by Sony. That's destruction of private property, criminal not civil, and their copyright lawyers can go shit off a cliff.
Seriously? Parent is not a troll, people. The link isn't all that informative, but it also isn't goatse.
I do remember hearing stories about outgassing lakes like this many years ago. It was thought that submerging a giant straw and/or circulating water across the thermocline would allow the CO2 to escape relatively safely. As I recall, the article I read about it ended along the lines of 'oh, how terrible it is that nobody will give $x0,000 to make this lake safe!'. I guess now that it is profitable the locals don't have to worry about sudden death by asphyxiation.
You mean the GPL? That would be free software for the end user, no restrictions. If you become a distributor, then there are certain reasonable restrictions. So long as you don't distribute the code, you can do anything else you want with it anywhere, any time. Certainly that doesn't qualify as 'many limits', nor does it even apply to the user.
Users are better served by the GPL. Distributors (particularly commercial distributors) arguably are better served by BSD/Apache-like licenses such as you reference.
Sometimes I think that troll is a weird form of eliza trainer, trying to produce comprehensible posts based on slashdot post histories. Clearly a non-starter unless you've been drinking sterno. Alternatively, it could be some form of encoded data, posted in a public forum and cleverly disguised as an asshat./tinfoilhat
One reason this neighborhood delivery system doesn't currently exist is the impulse buy. Another is that for it to be as efficient as possible, everyone in the neighborhood would have to sign up. Another is that a lot of people are picky about their meats/produce and want to select it themselves.
A similar process exists in grocery co-ops. A group of people get together and plan for a month's dry goods. The co-op manager then bulk-buys these items and delivers the individual shares. People still need to go buy their own fresh or frozen items, but this method avoids many drawbacks of the neighborhood delivery system. One drawback to this method is that you actually need proper meal planning or very good organizational skills to pull it off.
As an alternative, a weekly delivery of nonperishable goods, cleaning supplies, and select frozen items (ice cream, veggies, microwave meals, etc.) would be much easier to arrange. It would largely negate the fuel savings under the original proposal because people would still be shopping once a week or more. More people would sign up for it because it is easier to do than a monthly or quarterly co-op. Grocery stores would still get their impulse buys and frequent buys of fresh items. Stores with membership cards like Rogers or Safeway could easily use their habit tracking data to send proposals to their customers to participate. The store would benefit from more predictable inventory demands, the members would get a small price break and not have to pick it up themselves, and it would make a small dent in traffic/fuel consumption. I believe it would also cause a small improvement in the planning skills of participants and cut down slightly on unnecessary buys. Paradoxically, the stores would see a slightly higher frequency of impulse buys since the people physically there have less in their cart.
This is a stepping stone to larger projects that could be successful today without substantial changes to our lifestyles. If it was offered in my area, I would do it in a heartbeat. Of course, I have a general menu ready to go for at least a month in advance (not set in stone, but shopping lists are a lot easier). I would be able to take advantage of this in a big way and make much smaller shopping trips once a week for fresh produce. Most people can put together a decent list for the next week. Plus, this would be a huge benefit for many elderly people to not have to carry all that heavy bulky stuff. They would only drive or catch a ride to get perishables, which are a lot easier to carry (other than milk).
Over time, this would lead to more corner stores selling perishables other than milk (since most of them have milk and bread anyway). People wouldn't have to drive as far to get the items not provided by their neighborhood system.
That depends. Any place where support is a cost center, yeah, expect to get screwed. Deal with a company that you actually pay for support (whether or not you also buy hardware/software from them) and you get a little leverage. If you are a business, pay someone for a support contract. It's worth it.
The legally accurate term for copyright violation is copyright violation. Copyright violation can include indirect financial damages to the monopoly-holder, but this does not make it stealing. Copyright violation is not theft, stealing, robbery, burglary, etc., etc. Let me repeat that. Copyright violation is not theft. Theft is not copyright violation. Theft is taking a physical object without permission. Copyright violation is making a copy or distributing a copy of a work without permission. These are not the same crimes. These crimes are not even related. Stop being stupid and buying the RIAA media blitz. Copyright violation IS NOT STEALING. Get over it. It's not an excuse, it doesn't make either crime right, but it is STILL TRUE. Deal with it.
That would be because the well-publicized cases are obviously deficient, improperly pursued, and massively cash imbalanced. Further, they apply laws intended for profit-making commercial copyright violators to private-party not-for-profit copyright violators. The applicable laws have their uses against multimillion dollar criminal enterprises, but they represent nuclear overkill when applied to mere individual citizens. Slashdot likes the underdog and really dislikes corporate overkill, and we love to point out reality distortion fields.
As for DRM...
DRM doesn't.
Doesn't what? Doesn't do a damn thing it claims other than criminalizing previously legal acts.
Agreed, most of the guys on the take are decent. They might skim cash and drugs, but they're the ones you want dealing with some violent psycho. They're also more likely to just let you go if you're nice and not being stupid, since they recognize the pointlessness of some laws. We've been lucky in my area to avoid the nastiness of bully cops, mainly because it's nowheresville.
It would be nice if we would (not could) pay cops and other emergency services people what they are worth. Same for teachers.
That particular 'highway' (collection of highways, backroads, etc.) does keep going north past kansas. It then meets up with I-80 and the busiest rail line in the states, where the majority of east-west drug traffic flows. Busting guys with suitcases of cannabis is one thing, but busting truckers with dozens of tons of the stuff is quite another. Same underlying forces prevail, though; some percentage of almost every bust is skimmed, especially the cash. Use the D-word and your particular reported crime gets a lot more attention (unless it was armed violence or something with a provision for property seizure, in which case you get the cavalry charge without having to bullshit them).
Same story here. We had hundreds of customers replace literally thousands of motherboards. After the first week, Dell let our in-house Dell certified guy send them spreadsheets with serial numbers and end customer details. They shipped replacement boards direct to the customer with no onsite visit or call from them, and they took our word that we were taking the customer's word that they knew what the hell they were looking at. It was a disaster for us, but Dell made a serious effort to keep us happy. They took steps that would never have happened if it wasn't a full-blown crisis in their support department, approving RMA's sight unseen and allowing end users to do the mobo replacements without even asking for the defective boards back. A couple of people got bad boards in their replacement batch, but it was a few boards, probably less than 1% of the overall number. Every site that needed help got a tech onsite from Dell to help do the parts replacements. Their US support team really stepped up in my opinion, almost approaching my own department for commitment.
The point is not to avoid catering to genius, the point is to prohibit individual choice with regard to occupation. If any job can be done by any school graduate with adequate results, then there are no jobs which take advantage of an individual talent or inclination. The point is to turn the worker into a machine, a commodity that can be easily traded from corporation to corporation and then discarded as soon as it starts to break down. The point is to strip all semblance of individuality and self-reflection from the populace, to create an army of workers who need approval from their boss, deadlines and performance reviews, and the steady paycheck to feel complete. When we become the faceless masses, nobody gives a shit. We live our lives in the reflection of the rich and famous, the sports team, the political group. We no longer live for ourselves or our families because we no longer have our own dreams, our own desires, and these things have been methodically stripped from us since before the age of reason (which I consider to be about 7, sometimes as early as 5 if the parents aren't completely clueless).
When people as a whole are predictable, dependable in their mediocrity, and easily led to a conclusion, then the economy blooms and corporate profits soar right alongside social problems and the steady degradation of human interaction.
Our society is sick. It's a sick joke and we are its target.
Ironically, this is the root argument for patents. It is also one of the few examples where the intended result actually occurs. Six months is a blink of the eye to analyze this kind of data, but it does give a valuable head start. Now if only we could get copyright trimmed down to a reasonable duration (like 20 years). On-topic, I agree that the embargo is essential to the overall process and does not harm scientific progress. After the customary 6-month wait, the data had better be released for free.
In an ideal world with perfect government, the police would arrive within seconds of an intruder arriving at your house. It would be nice to have that kind of safety, but the sacrifice of freedoms necessary to make that possible are too terrible to consider. Yet, we consider it often.
In the real world, it could be 5, 10, or even 15 minutes for a unit to respond to an intruder. That's if you are lucky enough to get the call out in time. Sometimes yelling something like "Bob, get the shotgun!" can be enough to scare someone off. Other times the sound of a shell loading will do the trick. But sometimes people just are not rational, and the only way to protect yourself and your family is with violence. It is an open debate about the merits of gun ownership vs. the drawbacks, but there are plenty of examples where gun ownership saved lives. Whether or not they outweigh the examples where gun ownership cost lives, I would still own a gun and keep it close at hand if I lived anywhere more populated. My children will learn gun safety about the same time that they learn to ride a bike (or climb cabinets and closets). We've already covered fire, knives, electricity, falling, cars, strangers, wild animals, strong currents, pretty much everything they might need to worry about. Guns are up next.
Thanks for the reply. Most of my AC replies are pointless trolls; it's nice to have one with substance.
In Nebraska, you need a basic permit to own any gun. You can get it at 16, sometimes younger, and it's just a gun safety course. Once you have that you can buy shotguns and most rifles. Your name is typically recorded, but there is no waiting period and shells are easy to buy. Individuals can conduct transactions privately, but are advised to report the sale and register serial numbers properly. Handguns and 'assault' rifles require an application with the local police. If you are not a felon it will almost certainly be approved, but it can take a few weeks. Guns in this category require a federal firearms form at purchase, which is sent to the ATF, state patrol, and local police. Private individuals can conduct these sales, but the reporting is a requirement and will get you in serious trouble if you don't report the sale. If you have a special need (IE, you have a private investigator's license or work security for a corporation with a corporate firearms license or are a police officer), you can request a concealed-carry permit which will probably be denied at least once. Automatic weapons are strictly forbidden. Explosive projectile ordinance is strictly forbidden. Other explosives are tightly regulated and inspected, but they are easy to get if you have a license. Rocket motors are subject to standard industry self-regulation. RC fixed-wing aircraft are unrestricted, but RC helicopters have unclear restrictions on mounting cameras and on maximum payload. Neither craft may mount a weapon of any kind.
The militia is mentioned only as a reason to ensure citizens are allowed to possess weapons, and as an insight into what weapons were intended. It is not the only reason for citizens to bear arms, nor is the right to bear arms inextricably tied to the existence and regulation of a militia. In the time that the Constitution was written, the militia was the most common military organization. The weapons indicated are therefore the weapons of the military. Grenades, assault rifles, cannons, claymore mines, etc., etc. in comparison to the modern military.
Currently, a license is required to own most weapons. It is possible to get a license to own an automatic rifle or shotgun, or to own a rocket launcher (listed as an infernal machine). It is possible to get a license to own and fly a fighter jet (but not with live weapons) or own and operate a combat tank (but not with live weapons). These licensing requirements are strictly speaking unconstitutional. Our society allows them because we are afraid of the crazy guy down the street and we don't want him in an Abrams blowing up courthouses. Our society limits them because we are afraid of the burglar or armed intruder and we want to have a reliable weapon for self-defense.
Our society has no real conception that one of the original purposes of a well-armed populace was to ensure fair governance. A corrupt government is easily overthrown when the average person has weapons and training comparable to the military. It is unfortunate that we have all been trained to be so stupid and so accepting of pre-digested answers that we are unable to react to failures of government in any meaningful way. The right to bear arms is meaningless today, except as an outlet for hunting and for security theatre and for a little sense of rebellion, all carefully controlled by the state.
Your last point is worth exploring further. If Linux systems comparable in age to XP are compared, there are in fact exploits in the wild. That would invalidate the argument that linux is too low in install-base to be targeted. What we see today is that with very few exceptions, 10-year-old linux systems aren't in use because they have been updated, patched, made more secure.
If we assume that the 10yo RHEL and the unpatched XP boxes are equally secure, then over time RHEL gains security when compared to the XP machine due to more frequent fixes. It may lose ground (though not necessarily fall behind) at XP service pack releases, but over the lifespan of the systems the linux system is normally more secure than the windows system.
Both systems require actions considered arcane by joe user when a difficult patch or upgrade comes along. For Windows, this is often because the necessary setting is buried beneath a mountain of dialogs, panels, and warnings (if the upgrade even does what it says it does). For Linux, this is often because the user must first obtain appropriate privilege, find the config file or script, and make specific text changes. It is confusing on both sides for the general user. For the more advanced user, Linux is far less irritating and insulting. It can be more work to get something working right sometimes, but it is often a lot less work to get back to that state after a serious problem.
My requisite example would definitely be MS-SQL server 2005. With multiple instances, uninstalling one instance also uninstalls the tools necessary to remove other instances. A massively complicated series of steps involving registry edits, manual file deletion, special MS utilities, and a healthy dose of prayer (or chicken sacrifice) is necessary to get the box working again without a full reinstall. In fact, the repair process is far more complicated than backup > format > reinstall OS > reconfigure.
I guess what I am saying is that most Linux systems are run by competent people, and that certainly does contribute to the platform's reputation for security. Even if you are not entirely competent, Linux can be made secure with a lot less effort than Windows and that also contributes. For Windows, though, the efforts made for security are often too little, too late, or too difficult. It is getting better, but it hasn't reached 'good' yet. How about a sandbox for suspicious executables? Let joe user drag his email attachment/activex control/shareware program to the sandbox (or let windows silently do it for him) and let it execute there, with no access to anything exploitable. If it is some harmless inane video, great. If it's a virus or if it tries anything stupid then the system quietly deletes it with no damage done. Sure it's more extreme than anything we would tolerate on linux, but how many hundreds of bank accounts and how many tens of thousands of windows reinstalls could that one feature save every day? (not to mention the bandwidth cost to Microsoft for the massive backlog of patches and updates after said reinstalls)
Anecdotal exception for you. I work in application support that often requires multiple remote connections (usually vnc, sometimes over a dozen separate instances). It takes a minimum of two 19" screens to get anything done, and two more would not be wasted. Several times a week, I collect fault data that results in 350mb+.7z files. I skim between 100 and 300 emails every workday. I typically have two browsers (firefox and IE) with multiple tabs, several text files, email, ticket interface, calculator, and several tickets open. If work is busy, add a call interface, several remote access apps, and several folders/ftp sites in addition to multiple concurrent downloads. The iPad would be a curiosity, nothing more.
If you were to make an iPad app to replace our multiline IP phones and include on-device call recording and review, caller ID, callback, and voicemail download, then I would be interested. If it could also handle email and client tracking software at the same time (and integrate call data into the ticketing system), then it would be even more useful. But I would still need the beastly desktop with lots of screen real estate and horsepower. Our sales reps could take that device and forget their desktops, though.
To address the training issue, going from XP to Vista took all of 10 minutes. That included grabbing firefox and finding a few customization sites. Actually getting the OS into a useful state is an ongoing battle, but I was able to use it for work within 15 minutes. Customers switching from XP to 7 didn't even notice, but that was only because they don't interact with the OS on our systems. This is not the typical experience for converts, but only because I am fairly technical and our customers don't touch the OS as a rule.
As a blackberry replacement, it would be fantastic. For people not chained to corporate crapware, likewise. It is a versatile peripheral, able to find utility in a wide variety of situations.
If their copyright is not registered on or before the date of your copying, they are not eligible to sue you for making that copy. Registration of copyright is a step that is sometimes missed (somehow) by the bigger studios in some cases. Even if you had reason to believe that what you were downloading was intended to be no-copying-allowed by the studio, there is a reasonable chance that the copyright is not registered and you are free to copy the work without fear of a (successful) lawsuit (in a rational world).
Many works are copyright but copying-allowed. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead would be more examples of mainstream bands that offer copyrighted material free for download. Some of that material has never appeared as a physical copy bearing a copyright notice. Some of that material is intentionally distributed via P2P, where the end user never has the opportunity to see any copyright notice of any kind (much like using P2P for any file).
Given that there are public domain works, copyright copying-allowed works, unregistered copyright without the right to enforce for punitive judgements works, copyright expired works, and copyright no-copying-allowed works, any of which may or may not also exist physically in some form and may or may not have a copyright notice present in any form anywhere, how are we to know what the actual legal status of the file we are copying actually is? Since only one of those possibilities bears any rational risk of a lawsuit, and only two of those possibilities bear any risk at all of a lawsuit, why should we simply assume that we are not allowed to copy anything ever? It's a ridiculous assumption, one that is intentionally promoted by big media to choke off the distribution streams of independant artists that dare not to pay the RIAA tax.
Fuck that. As far as I'm concerned, the RIAA should go down via RICO, broken up, member companies dissolved, and assets (including copyrights) distributed to artists. That doesn't mean it's copyright infringement party time either (piracy involves ships and cannons/swords/machine guns, period).
Something smart for the RIAA and members to do would be to offer a self-reporting moratorium on lawsuits. Individuals could admit to infringing copyright for a certain number of works, pay a fee of one dollar per work, and be free from the threat of litigation. The actual amounts to be harvested by this approach will be orders of magnitude more than they could ever hope to receive in profits from long and expensive and risky court cases. The RIAA then becomes the wise and benevolent group they claim to be in the eyes of the general public and avoids the risk of one of these lawsuits going to the Supreme Court and ruining their citizen-raping joyride. Next, start up their own paid p2p subscription service. $10 a month for all the music you can download, hosting and bandwidth provided by your own users. No drm, no copy protection, just simple and easy and affordable access to music. I could afford that. Hell, if they promised to give at least 70% of profits to artists proportional to their download numbers, I would even use the service. If they offered streaming audio like netflix does with streaming video, it would be rare for me to ever download more than a handful of songs a month.
Before I address your posts directly, I should say something more on-topic. Not all the CSM candidates are 0.0 alliance figureheads. They try very hard to make that happen, but there are more pilots in empire. Certain popular figures are already espousing their intent to improve the lives of lowsec players (pirates mostly, but a lot of industry happens between 0.1 and 0.4). As for a game company actually listening to their user base, I only wish more software developers operated like CCP.
On to the response... It's a big galaxy. You need to go to lower-security systems to find random pirates. If you want slightly more structured destruction, go run combat missions. If that still does not fit what you want, go to lowsec and attack players. They have much better loot than the npc's... If that doesn't do it for you, look for a friendly corp (or a ruthless one) that offers nullsec access and go shoot npc battleships with one eye on local watching for players who want to help you into a new clone.
As for the economy, you have choices. Fill an existing buy order (where another player has set the price), or place a sell order and try to undercut the competition. If you were in a proper corp, it is possible that they would have deals on mission loot and ammo, etc. for members. You could be invited to run group missions more difficult than you could complete alone, receiving rewards orders of magnitude higher than what is possible on your own (without a very expensive ship and over a year of training).
I get what you are saying about wanting to be self-reliant. A lot of the people in my corp are like that; we associate to have people to talk to, and to get the occasional deal on t2 ships or components. We often buy and sell amongst ourselves first before considering the market as a whole. But it expands over time; people realize they can achieve their goals much faster by working with another person or two here and there.
If you are still interested in playing, I would be happy to invite you to my corp, no strings attached. The corp chat is a good place for advice; we have players anywhere from 1 month to 4+ years experience. There are occasional (voluntary) group operations, everything from mining and missions to lowsec roams and POS takedowns. It sounds like you've already decided not to play, but if you change your mind reply to this post or leave a note on my journal and we'll work it out.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole point is that the academy does not adhere to the rules of modern mass schooling. The people using it are self-seeking knowledge for their own reasons, not being force-fed the formula needed to pass this week's federally-mandated test. Each person can proceed at their own pace. That's an efficiency that cannot be realized in the modern classroom. Scientific testing is not necessary at this point, partly because there are proven success stories amongst the site's users and partly because the site is not competing for scholastic funding with public schools. Pray that never comes to pass if you (not you personally, you the generic reader of this rant who happens to be a teacher or an 'administrator') want to keep working in the public system, because private schools of nearly every type trounce public schools in every comparison that isn't rigged.
Human beings have been teaching themselves and each other for millenia without benefit of supposedly superior rote methods developed over the last century. They do this by applying a desire to learn with some logic and some language skills. Direct instruction alone falls short, but direct instruction with personal exploration excels. This is what produced our nation's great leaders, not to mention nearly every recognized genius throughout history. Being given free access to one person's explanation of a particular subject is a huge advantage to those teaching themselves, whether because their original education was crap or because their education in progress is crap. It is only one person's take, but there are plenty of other sources available to further investigate topics of interest. Having this many topics together in one place along with practice aids is head and shoulders above simply learning at the library, let alone sitting through forced schooling at the rate of the slowest learner for each and every topic.
Mods: the truth by definition is not a troll. Whether justified or not, environmental groups will take steps to control or completely block actions that involve new mining and refining operations in the US. I may even agree with and support their arguments in this case, but opposition is inevitable. Stating this particular truth in no way implies that environmental preservation is good or bad or that such statements should be modded as troll. Stick to the facts and follow the rules.
This action by China (if it is not a bluff) represents only a temporary shortfall in supply. Prices will rise, fingers will point, other mining operations will start up and China will lose both business and goodwill. All it takes is Japan's willingness to give China the finger and refuse to negotiate trade agreements in parallel with territory and sovereignty issues. On the flip side, Japan might not have the stones to hold out for an international resolution. In that case, China hikes prices and Japan takes the economic hit in part and the rest of the technological world takes up the remaining slack. All this while China gets richer.
Because of this, I find it unlikely that China will actually uphold such an embargo. It would be a threat used as a lever, and a weak one at that. This fits with the reported trigger event, a Chinese national held in Japan. China isn't exactly well-known for caring about their people, but it does give them an opportunity to wave the swagger stick a little. Too much and they risk international repercussions, but just a little bit and nobody other than Japan will remember it next week.
It matters for those of us making legitimate backups of our optical media libraries.
That one case, sure. But what if all the other pending trials used that one case as their anchor and weathered the full storm in court? At $10k per case that could easily rise above $20m.
They do have the money, and they have additional federal funding on top of that. What happens is it gets spent on other things (uniforms, facility improvements). Then Joe Vendor comes along and offers a tidy sum to 'handle' their lunches. Vendor pays for exclusive access, prices to match or exceed existing prices, then cuts their costs by 50% or more by serving crap. People complain but they have a 5+-year contract ironclad, and besides we already spent the money they paid us.
Some places don't do exclusive deals (like my high school). They contracted each weekday to a different local food service company. Tuesdays was pizza by Little Caesars, for instance. You were required to leave the line with every item on the menu, but you were not required to eat it. Aside from the main course, the food was actually pretty ok for bulk canned goods. It was a simple system: [ ] school meal [ ] home meal [ ] second serving.
Why are we offering so much choice that it's possible to eat nothing but junk food? I think that is the real problem, and if it was addressed there would be no need for dietary tracking. I could understand a choice of menus, maybe three, with one being vegetarian and avoiding common allergens. Many of the same benefits of a single menu system would apply, and students would still have a bit of a choice. No complicated tracking required, not even for account management.
First, parent is not a troll. Sabotaging advertised features in hardware that has already been sold is bad. That includes the 'other OS' option too, not just the semi-humorous suggestion of USB ports. The state AG (attorney general) is responsible for acting on customer complaints from people in their state, and they do act if enough complaints are received. Parent's advice is quite rational and should be acted upon by victims of corporate stupidity. If several state AGs are considering lawsuits, you can bet the federal government will take a long look at the situation as well. It's not some horribly complicated software EULA, it's my hardware that I bought that is being broken by Sony. That's destruction of private property, criminal not civil, and their copyright lawyers can go shit off a cliff.
Seriously? Parent is not a troll, people. The link isn't all that informative, but it also isn't goatse.
I do remember hearing stories about outgassing lakes like this many years ago. It was thought that submerging a giant straw and/or circulating water across the thermocline would allow the CO2 to escape relatively safely. As I recall, the article I read about it ended along the lines of 'oh, how terrible it is that nobody will give $x0,000 to make this lake safe!'. I guess now that it is profitable the locals don't have to worry about sudden death by asphyxiation.
You mean the GPL? That would be free software for the end user, no restrictions. If you become a distributor, then there are certain reasonable restrictions. So long as you don't distribute the code, you can do anything else you want with it anywhere, any time. Certainly that doesn't qualify as 'many limits', nor does it even apply to the user.
Users are better served by the GPL. Distributors (particularly commercial distributors) arguably are better served by BSD/Apache-like licenses such as you reference.
Sometimes I think that troll is a weird form of eliza trainer, trying to produce comprehensible posts based on slashdot post histories. Clearly a non-starter unless you've been drinking sterno. Alternatively, it could be some form of encoded data, posted in a public forum and cleverly disguised as an asshat. /tinfoilhat
As to the light show, wish I could see it.
One reason this neighborhood delivery system doesn't currently exist is the impulse buy. Another is that for it to be as efficient as possible, everyone in the neighborhood would have to sign up. Another is that a lot of people are picky about their meats/produce and want to select it themselves.
A similar process exists in grocery co-ops. A group of people get together and plan for a month's dry goods. The co-op manager then bulk-buys these items and delivers the individual shares. People still need to go buy their own fresh or frozen items, but this method avoids many drawbacks of the neighborhood delivery system. One drawback to this method is that you actually need proper meal planning or very good organizational skills to pull it off.
As an alternative, a weekly delivery of nonperishable goods, cleaning supplies, and select frozen items (ice cream, veggies, microwave meals, etc.) would be much easier to arrange. It would largely negate the fuel savings under the original proposal because people would still be shopping once a week or more. More people would sign up for it because it is easier to do than a monthly or quarterly co-op. Grocery stores would still get their impulse buys and frequent buys of fresh items. Stores with membership cards like Rogers or Safeway could easily use their habit tracking data to send proposals to their customers to participate. The store would benefit from more predictable inventory demands, the members would get a small price break and not have to pick it up themselves, and it would make a small dent in traffic/fuel consumption. I believe it would also cause a small improvement in the planning skills of participants and cut down slightly on unnecessary buys. Paradoxically, the stores would see a slightly higher frequency of impulse buys since the people physically there have less in their cart.
This is a stepping stone to larger projects that could be successful today without substantial changes to our lifestyles. If it was offered in my area, I would do it in a heartbeat. Of course, I have a general menu ready to go for at least a month in advance (not set in stone, but shopping lists are a lot easier). I would be able to take advantage of this in a big way and make much smaller shopping trips once a week for fresh produce. Most people can put together a decent list for the next week. Plus, this would be a huge benefit for many elderly people to not have to carry all that heavy bulky stuff. They would only drive or catch a ride to get perishables, which are a lot easier to carry (other than milk).
Over time, this would lead to more corner stores selling perishables other than milk (since most of them have milk and bread anyway). People wouldn't have to drive as far to get the items not provided by their neighborhood system.
That depends. Any place where support is a cost center, yeah, expect to get screwed. Deal with a company that you actually pay for support (whether or not you also buy hardware/software from them) and you get a little leverage. If you are a business, pay someone for a support contract. It's worth it.
The legally accurate term for copyright violation is copyright violation. Copyright violation can include indirect financial damages to the monopoly-holder, but this does not make it stealing. Copyright violation is not theft, stealing, robbery, burglary, etc., etc. Let me repeat that. Copyright violation is not theft. Theft is not copyright violation. Theft is taking a physical object without permission. Copyright violation is making a copy or distributing a copy of a work without permission. These are not the same crimes. These crimes are not even related. Stop being stupid and buying the RIAA media blitz. Copyright violation IS NOT STEALING. Get over it. It's not an excuse, it doesn't make either crime right, but it is STILL TRUE. Deal with it.
That would be because the well-publicized cases are obviously deficient, improperly pursued, and massively cash imbalanced. Further, they apply laws intended for profit-making commercial copyright violators to private-party not-for-profit copyright violators. The applicable laws have their uses against multimillion dollar criminal enterprises, but they represent nuclear overkill when applied to mere individual citizens. Slashdot likes the underdog and really dislikes corporate overkill, and we love to point out reality distortion fields.
As for DRM...
DRM doesn't.
Doesn't what? Doesn't do a damn thing it claims other than criminalizing previously legal acts.
Agreed, most of the guys on the take are decent. They might skim cash and drugs, but they're the ones you want dealing with some violent psycho. They're also more likely to just let you go if you're nice and not being stupid, since they recognize the pointlessness of some laws. We've been lucky in my area to avoid the nastiness of bully cops, mainly because it's nowheresville.
It would be nice if we would (not could) pay cops and other emergency services people what they are worth. Same for teachers.
That particular 'highway' (collection of highways, backroads, etc.) does keep going north past kansas. It then meets up with I-80 and the busiest rail line in the states, where the majority of east-west drug traffic flows. Busting guys with suitcases of cannabis is one thing, but busting truckers with dozens of tons of the stuff is quite another. Same underlying forces prevail, though; some percentage of almost every bust is skimmed, especially the cash. Use the D-word and your particular reported crime gets a lot more attention (unless it was armed violence or something with a provision for property seizure, in which case you get the cavalry charge without having to bullshit them).
Same story here. We had hundreds of customers replace literally thousands of motherboards. After the first week, Dell let our in-house Dell certified guy send them spreadsheets with serial numbers and end customer details. They shipped replacement boards direct to the customer with no onsite visit or call from them, and they took our word that we were taking the customer's word that they knew what the hell they were looking at. It was a disaster for us, but Dell made a serious effort to keep us happy. They took steps that would never have happened if it wasn't a full-blown crisis in their support department, approving RMA's sight unseen and allowing end users to do the mobo replacements without even asking for the defective boards back. A couple of people got bad boards in their replacement batch, but it was a few boards, probably less than 1% of the overall number. Every site that needed help got a tech onsite from Dell to help do the parts replacements. Their US support team really stepped up in my opinion, almost approaching my own department for commitment.
The point is not to avoid catering to genius, the point is to prohibit individual choice with regard to occupation. If any job can be done by any school graduate with adequate results, then there are no jobs which take advantage of an individual talent or inclination. The point is to turn the worker into a machine, a commodity that can be easily traded from corporation to corporation and then discarded as soon as it starts to break down. The point is to strip all semblance of individuality and self-reflection from the populace, to create an army of workers who need approval from their boss, deadlines and performance reviews, and the steady paycheck to feel complete. When we become the faceless masses, nobody gives a shit. We live our lives in the reflection of the rich and famous, the sports team, the political group. We no longer live for ourselves or our families because we no longer have our own dreams, our own desires, and these things have been methodically stripped from us since before the age of reason (which I consider to be about 7, sometimes as early as 5 if the parents aren't completely clueless).
When people as a whole are predictable, dependable in their mediocrity, and easily led to a conclusion, then the economy blooms and corporate profits soar right alongside social problems and the steady degradation of human interaction.
Our society is sick. It's a sick joke and we are its target.
Ironically, this is the root argument for patents. It is also one of the few examples where the intended result actually occurs. Six months is a blink of the eye to analyze this kind of data, but it does give a valuable head start. Now if only we could get copyright trimmed down to a reasonable duration (like 20 years).
On-topic, I agree that the embargo is essential to the overall process and does not harm scientific progress. After the customary 6-month wait, the data had better be released for free.
In an ideal world with perfect government, the police would arrive within seconds of an intruder arriving at your house. It would be nice to have that kind of safety, but the sacrifice of freedoms necessary to make that possible are too terrible to consider. Yet, we consider it often.
In the real world, it could be 5, 10, or even 15 minutes for a unit to respond to an intruder. That's if you are lucky enough to get the call out in time. Sometimes yelling something like "Bob, get the shotgun!" can be enough to scare someone off. Other times the sound of a shell loading will do the trick. But sometimes people just are not rational, and the only way to protect yourself and your family is with violence. It is an open debate about the merits of gun ownership vs. the drawbacks, but there are plenty of examples where gun ownership saved lives. Whether or not they outweigh the examples where gun ownership cost lives, I would still own a gun and keep it close at hand if I lived anywhere more populated. My children will learn gun safety about the same time that they learn to ride a bike (or climb cabinets and closets). We've already covered fire, knives, electricity, falling, cars, strangers, wild animals, strong currents, pretty much everything they might need to worry about. Guns are up next.
Thanks for the reply. Most of my AC replies are pointless trolls; it's nice to have one with substance.
In Nebraska, you need a basic permit to own any gun. You can get it at 16, sometimes younger, and it's just a gun safety course. Once you have that you can buy shotguns and most rifles. Your name is typically recorded, but there is no waiting period and shells are easy to buy. Individuals can conduct transactions privately, but are advised to report the sale and register serial numbers properly. Handguns and 'assault' rifles require an application with the local police. If you are not a felon it will almost certainly be approved, but it can take a few weeks. Guns in this category require a federal firearms form at purchase, which is sent to the ATF, state patrol, and local police. Private individuals can conduct these sales, but the reporting is a requirement and will get you in serious trouble if you don't report the sale. If you have a special need (IE, you have a private investigator's license or work security for a corporation with a corporate firearms license or are a police officer), you can request a concealed-carry permit which will probably be denied at least once. Automatic weapons are strictly forbidden. Explosive projectile ordinance is strictly forbidden. Other explosives are tightly regulated and inspected, but they are easy to get if you have a license. Rocket motors are subject to standard industry self-regulation. RC fixed-wing aircraft are unrestricted, but RC helicopters have unclear restrictions on mounting cameras and on maximum payload. Neither craft may mount a weapon of any kind.
The militia is mentioned only as a reason to ensure citizens are allowed to possess weapons, and as an insight into what weapons were intended. It is not the only reason for citizens to bear arms, nor is the right to bear arms inextricably tied to the existence and regulation of a militia. In the time that the Constitution was written, the militia was the most common military organization. The weapons indicated are therefore the weapons of the military. Grenades, assault rifles, cannons, claymore mines, etc., etc. in comparison to the modern military.
Currently, a license is required to own most weapons. It is possible to get a license to own an automatic rifle or shotgun, or to own a rocket launcher (listed as an infernal machine). It is possible to get a license to own and fly a fighter jet (but not with live weapons) or own and operate a combat tank (but not with live weapons). These licensing requirements are strictly speaking unconstitutional. Our society allows them because we are afraid of the crazy guy down the street and we don't want him in an Abrams blowing up courthouses. Our society limits them because we are afraid of the burglar or armed intruder and we want to have a reliable weapon for self-defense.
Our society has no real conception that one of the original purposes of a well-armed populace was to ensure fair governance. A corrupt government is easily overthrown when the average person has weapons and training comparable to the military. It is unfortunate that we have all been trained to be so stupid and so accepting of pre-digested answers that we are unable to react to failures of government in any meaningful way. The right to bear arms is meaningless today, except as an outlet for hunting and for security theatre and for a little sense of rebellion, all carefully controlled by the state.
Your last point is worth exploring further. If Linux systems comparable in age to XP are compared, there are in fact exploits in the wild. That would invalidate the argument that linux is too low in install-base to be targeted. What we see today is that with very few exceptions, 10-year-old linux systems aren't in use because they have been updated, patched, made more secure.
If we assume that the 10yo RHEL and the unpatched XP boxes are equally secure, then over time RHEL gains security when compared to the XP machine due to more frequent fixes. It may lose ground (though not necessarily fall behind) at XP service pack releases, but over the lifespan of the systems the linux system is normally more secure than the windows system.
Both systems require actions considered arcane by joe user when a difficult patch or upgrade comes along. For Windows, this is often because the necessary setting is buried beneath a mountain of dialogs, panels, and warnings (if the upgrade even does what it says it does). For Linux, this is often because the user must first obtain appropriate privilege, find the config file or script, and make specific text changes. It is confusing on both sides for the general user. For the more advanced user, Linux is far less irritating and insulting. It can be more work to get something working right sometimes, but it is often a lot less work to get back to that state after a serious problem.
My requisite example would definitely be MS-SQL server 2005. With multiple instances, uninstalling one instance also uninstalls the tools necessary to remove other instances. A massively complicated series of steps involving registry edits, manual file deletion, special MS utilities, and a healthy dose of prayer (or chicken sacrifice) is necessary to get the box working again without a full reinstall. In fact, the repair process is far more complicated than backup > format > reinstall OS > reconfigure.
I guess what I am saying is that most Linux systems are run by competent people, and that certainly does contribute to the platform's reputation for security. Even if you are not entirely competent, Linux can be made secure with a lot less effort than Windows and that also contributes. For Windows, though, the efforts made for security are often too little, too late, or too difficult. It is getting better, but it hasn't reached 'good' yet. How about a sandbox for suspicious executables? Let joe user drag his email attachment/activex control/shareware program to the sandbox (or let windows silently do it for him) and let it execute there, with no access to anything exploitable. If it is some harmless inane video, great. If it's a virus or if it tries anything stupid then the system quietly deletes it with no damage done. Sure it's more extreme than anything we would tolerate on linux, but how many hundreds of bank accounts and how many tens of thousands of windows reinstalls could that one feature save every day? (not to mention the bandwidth cost to Microsoft for the massive backlog of patches and updates after said reinstalls)
Anecdotal exception for you. I work in application support that often requires multiple remote connections (usually vnc, sometimes over a dozen separate instances). It takes a minimum of two 19" screens to get anything done, and two more would not be wasted. Several times a week, I collect fault data that results in 350mb+ .7z files. I skim between 100 and 300 emails every workday. I typically have two browsers (firefox and IE) with multiple tabs, several text files, email, ticket interface, calculator, and several tickets open. If work is busy, add a call interface, several remote access apps, and several folders/ftp sites in addition to multiple concurrent downloads. The iPad would be a curiosity, nothing more.
If you were to make an iPad app to replace our multiline IP phones and include on-device call recording and review, caller ID, callback, and voicemail download, then I would be interested. If it could also handle email and client tracking software at the same time (and integrate call data into the ticketing system), then it would be even more useful. But I would still need the beastly desktop with lots of screen real estate and horsepower. Our sales reps could take that device and forget their desktops, though.
To address the training issue, going from XP to Vista took all of 10 minutes. That included grabbing firefox and finding a few customization sites. Actually getting the OS into a useful state is an ongoing battle, but I was able to use it for work within 15 minutes. Customers switching from XP to 7 didn't even notice, but that was only because they don't interact with the OS on our systems. This is not the typical experience for converts, but only because I am fairly technical and our customers don't touch the OS as a rule.
As a blackberry replacement, it would be fantastic. For people not chained to corporate crapware, likewise. It is a versatile peripheral, able to find utility in a wide variety of situations.
If their copyright is not registered on or before the date of your copying, they are not eligible to sue you for making that copy. Registration of copyright is a step that is sometimes missed (somehow) by the bigger studios in some cases. Even if you had reason to believe that what you were downloading was intended to be no-copying-allowed by the studio, there is a reasonable chance that the copyright is not registered and you are free to copy the work without fear of a (successful) lawsuit (in a rational world).
Many works are copyright but copying-allowed. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead would be more examples of mainstream bands that offer copyrighted material free for download. Some of that material has never appeared as a physical copy bearing a copyright notice. Some of that material is intentionally distributed via P2P, where the end user never has the opportunity to see any copyright notice of any kind (much like using P2P for any file).
Given that there are public domain works, copyright copying-allowed works, unregistered copyright without the right to enforce for punitive judgements works, copyright expired works, and copyright no-copying-allowed works, any of which may or may not also exist physically in some form and may or may not have a copyright notice present in any form anywhere, how are we to know what the actual legal status of the file we are copying actually is? Since only one of those possibilities bears any rational risk of a lawsuit, and only two of those possibilities bear any risk at all of a lawsuit, why should we simply assume that we are not allowed to copy anything ever? It's a ridiculous assumption, one that is intentionally promoted by big media to choke off the distribution streams of independant artists that dare not to pay the RIAA tax.
Fuck that. As far as I'm concerned, the RIAA should go down via RICO, broken up, member companies dissolved, and assets (including copyrights) distributed to artists. That doesn't mean it's copyright infringement party time either (piracy involves ships and cannons/swords/machine guns, period).
Something smart for the RIAA and members to do would be to offer a self-reporting moratorium on lawsuits. Individuals could admit to infringing copyright for a certain number of works, pay a fee of one dollar per work, and be free from the threat of litigation. The actual amounts to be harvested by this approach will be orders of magnitude more than they could ever hope to receive in profits from long and expensive and risky court cases. The RIAA then becomes the wise and benevolent group they claim to be in the eyes of the general public and avoids the risk of one of these lawsuits going to the Supreme Court and ruining their citizen-raping joyride. Next, start up their own paid p2p subscription service. $10 a month for all the music you can download, hosting and bandwidth provided by your own users. No drm, no copy protection, just simple and easy and affordable access to music. I could afford that. Hell, if they promised to give at least 70% of profits to artists proportional to their download numbers, I would even use the service. If they offered streaming audio like netflix does with streaming video, it would be rare for me to ever download more than a handful of songs a month.
Before I address your posts directly, I should say something more on-topic. Not all the CSM candidates are 0.0 alliance figureheads. They try very hard to make that happen, but there are more pilots in empire. Certain popular figures are already espousing their intent to improve the lives of lowsec players (pirates mostly, but a lot of industry happens between 0.1 and 0.4). As for a game company actually listening to their user base, I only wish more software developers operated like CCP.
On to the response...
It's a big galaxy. You need to go to lower-security systems to find random pirates. If you want slightly more structured destruction, go run combat missions. If that still does not fit what you want, go to lowsec and attack players. They have much better loot than the npc's... If that doesn't do it for you, look for a friendly corp (or a ruthless one) that offers nullsec access and go shoot npc battleships with one eye on local watching for players who want to help you into a new clone.
As for the economy, you have choices. Fill an existing buy order (where another player has set the price), or place a sell order and try to undercut the competition. If you were in a proper corp, it is possible that they would have deals on mission loot and ammo, etc. for members. You could be invited to run group missions more difficult than you could complete alone, receiving rewards orders of magnitude higher than what is possible on your own (without a very expensive ship and over a year of training).
I get what you are saying about wanting to be self-reliant. A lot of the people in my corp are like that; we associate to have people to talk to, and to get the occasional deal on t2 ships or components. We often buy and sell amongst ourselves first before considering the market as a whole. But it expands over time; people realize they can achieve their goals much faster by working with another person or two here and there.
If you are still interested in playing, I would be happy to invite you to my corp, no strings attached. The corp chat is a good place for advice; we have players anywhere from 1 month to 4+ years experience. There are occasional (voluntary) group operations, everything from mining and missions to lowsec roams and POS takedowns. It sounds like you've already decided not to play, but if you change your mind reply to this post or leave a note on my journal and we'll work it out.