While many of the scored votes centered on Internet policy, others covered computer export restrictions, H-1B visas, free trade, research and development, electronic passports and class action lawsuits.
The article is lean on the science and heavy on the fluff, but apparently their methodology involved assuming what they believed to be the technology-friendly stance on each of these issues, and then scoring Congress according to whether or not a member voted for a bill that supported that stance. This raises all sorts of issues. For example, how do you score a Senator or Representative when they vote against a free trade bill because it contains pork that would get rid of the estate tax? By the time it's been processed and mangled by the committees, very little legislation is "clean" enough so that you could claim that it is exclusively about one issue, or exclusively about another.
Furthermore, what do you do when there are two sides to an issue, and each side is presented as having technological interests in mind? (For example, "Computer export restrictions help domestic tech companies" vs. "Not having computer export restrictions helps domestic tech companies.") Are we supposed to assume that Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, through the prism of their infinite wisdom and impeccable judgment, have arrived at some sort of "correct" stance on these issues? Forgive me if I'm just a little skeptical.
I don't like where you're coming from at all. Hey, congratulations, you are morally superior to us in every way. And don't forget, it is only when you lord news of your own charity over us that we can be shamed by it.
I feel like I was really out of the loop on this. I don't always have my finger and thumb on the pulse of technological issues, but I make an earnest attempt to. I knew about the $100 laptops from a long time ago, but this is the first I've heard of the $300 charity versions. But you know, I'm not some kind of Everyman here, just one man. Maybe my neighbors knew all about this and each bought two (although after looking at the final pledge numbers, that seems unlikely). So whatever kind of advertising they had for this failed me. Whether or not it failed another 300,000 other people is for you to decide.
That's amazing, it's always the AC's that have nothing of any consequence to say. What kind of moron links to information that he thinks is contrary, but actually just proves out what I just said? I don't think you even read what you linked to, or you would realize that you just provided evidence for my claims. For instance:
Since the Boulder decision [4] in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that municipalities may be subject to antitrust liability for anticompetitive acts, most cable franchises have been nominally nonexclusive but in fact do operate to preclude all competitors.
[emphasis added]
Do you see that? That means that it's a constructive monopoly (you know, like I said). What that essentially means is that "It's not a monopoly per se, but it might as well be because there are (often financial) barriers to entry in the market" (you know, like I said). I'm just astounded that you would Google something, read the first sentence, and then assume that you've found new, conflicting information. It represents an astounding lack of intelligence and intellectual honesty on your part. Don't waste my time.
This may be the beer talking, but I just re-read your post and I seriously can't point to a single statement you made that is even true. It's not personal, I'm sure you were just trying to be helpful. It's just discouraging because I'm sure you will be modded up further as "informative", even though you're not informing anyone--you're feeding them lies. I mean even if you were to go so far as to break down every sentence into independent and dependent clauses, it reads like "wrong"..."wrong"..."nope"..."no"..."wrong"...do mods even verify what they moderate or do they just mod up whatever seems authoritative?:( You see that? That's a text frowny face. That represents my new attitude towards your post.
I just finished my comment when I noticed yours. Just to clarify, this isn't a "state-mandated" problem by any means. Also, the contract signed between the city and the cable company may not necessarily be exclusive--it may be that there are just significant financial barriers to entry in the market that have created a kind of constructive monopoly (nitpicking, I know, but it is important to distinguish between purely contractual and purely economic restrictions or else risk misleading others).
"Petitioning your city council" will do approximately jack shit. There is usually a formal process in place whereby disgruntled cable customers can voice their concerns, and it's well-timed with the franchise renewal process, which could be years and years away. Unless the cable provider were to breach (very unlikely--they'd practically have to burn down the town) then the battleground will be the franchise renewal period. I'm a lawyer by trade and have at least a passing familiarity with how these franchise agreements work. But you see, like most legal professionals, I tend to be a bit of a lush, and after my 6th beer it becomes harder and harder to link to the information that I know to be true. Feel free to Google away in my stead.
Where I can only buy Cox cable and only Cox cable because my neighborhood made some ancient agreement when I didn't live here. Where's the competition? Nowhere. Free market my ass.
This isn't quite true. You see, there were market forces at work when the franchise agreement between Cox Cable and your town or county was being negotiated. Whenever your area was making a move from broadcast programming into the cable world, there were probably a number of cable television players vying for the contract. For whatever reason--we would hope, as a result of offering the most competitive terms--Cox got the contract:
1. Sometimes these agreements are exclusive, sometimes not. Sometimes they are written to not necessarily be exclusive, but they might as well be because the existing cable company owns all of the infrastructure and is unwilling to lease its property to a potential competitor. Other times, it is your local phone company that is responsible for keeping competition out. You see, many phone companies actually lease the space on the top of their phone poles to cable companies that need to use them to string cable lines. You want to talk about a racket? The price is calculated per pole and usually to the cable company's detriment. The phone company has a sweet, parasitic thing going, and is often either unwilling or contractually unable to jeopardize it by leasing to others. Incidentally, if you've ever stood on the sidelines while one utility company totally screws another utility, it's about the funniest thing in the world.
2. Note that franchise agreements are subject to renewal, and if you really felt like Cox wasn't doing right by its customers, you could raise those issues when it was time for the agreement to be renewed. There is a simple appeals process in place that covers that exact situation. It's not common, but it's been known to happen. Then, as Cox's world comes crashing down, their franchise agreement no more and their property has been sold off at fire-sale prices, you will see plenty of cable providers come courting, promising you the world.
1. Run Windows natively but unplug your CAT-5 cable or disable your networking devices under the device manager. Having no internet access under Windows fixes this and many other problems nicely.
2. Are you really sure that the graphics applications you use require Microsoft Windows? I think that you would be very surprised by how good the support is for most Adobe products, including Photoshop, using WINE.
3. Run Windows and your graphics applications in a virtual environment using VMWare. Unless your graphics applications require advanced, DirectX-based rendering or some such thing (unlikely), then this will work great too.
I wholeheartedly discourage you to read Mr. Klemens' book and instead encourage you to rely on, for example, some kind of electronic forum where widespread misunderstanding and disinformation about intellectual property law runs rampant. If only such a thing actually existed, it would mean more work for lawyers. Oh well.
Thanks for clearing that up! The article you linked to mentions not only the time frame, but many other important details that are only glossed over in the original article. And this from the same news source! It makes me wish that it had been linked to in the summary instead of the one that was.
It makes sense because you will be paying for this, in your lifetime. It used to be easy to dismiss this as a "children and children's children" problem, but the fact is that the rate at which these changes are taking place as drastically increased, making this no longer the exclusive concern of those who have not been born yet. Sadly, ten years from now, "I told you so" will not be nearly as financially telling as the changes we put into place now.
This is from the article:
However the review says failure to act early could end up costing between 5% and 20% of global GDP and render large parts of the planet uninhabitable with poor nations hit first and hardest.
The article does not say when that is supposed to happen, and like everybody else here I haven't read the 700-page report that the article refers to, only the article itself. What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades. If you don't plan on being alive 10-30 years from now (depending on the data you're relying on), then, well--I hope your life was successful and fulfilling. For the rest of us, we have a very real global problem on our hands that will become at least partially realized within our lifetimes. And you better believe we will be picking up the tab for it.
Environmental solutions are often stigmatized as being incompatible with economic issues--that for every spotted owl you save, you put a lumberjack out of work and so on. Similarly, there is an ongoing misconception that money spent on environmental issues does not pay forward in a meaningful way, and that it just means less money for improving education, the economy, or a myriad of other governmental concerns. Finally, we have evidence that a nation need not sacrifice economic growth for the sake of environmental responsibility.
I've read their website and I watched their demo, and I'm just sure there is some kind of catch. Could someone who has been using this service for a while report if there have been any unexpected surprises on their phone bill? Is the quality like Skype i.e. is it sometimes cackly and doesn't handle bidirectional speech well?
Sidenote: It doesn't help either that I speak Spanish and keep reading the name of their service as "Hah Hah". You know like, "Ha hah, the joke's on you when we bill you three dollars a minute 18 months from now..."
Those are valid points. You just hit upon some of what makes Ubuntu so appealing to new users: the small size, ease of configuration and so on. My point is that we owe a greater duty to new users to make sure that what they are installing is more or less "quirk free".
But even then, "quirk" is a bit of an understatement--we're talking about breaking net access, crashing the X server and so on. It's semi-serious stuff that would leave a new user absolutely baffled. The intermediate users will know to check the forums to solve any problems, and the advanced ones will already know what to do. No, it's the people who are picking up Linux for the first time with whom we want to make the best impression. That's why these upgrade problems are so hurtful to new adoption of the OS--they affect the very people who we're trying to welcome into the fold.
No, this is an offical, stable, release. Nobody knows what the hell you're talking about. If it were marked unstable, then sure--problems would be inevitable. But it's an official, stable release. Anybody who bothered to click on the articles would have ascertained that. Get your facts straight before you post, please.
Me three (Firefox RC3 under Gentoo Linux). What I have noticed is that most of the people who complain about memory leaks and crashes seem to be running Windows. Could it be that the Firefox binary is being compiled a certain way, leaving it more susceptible to these sorts of problems? Or is it just that the user is running Windows, which in itself is more susceptible to crashes? Perhaps someone with more technical knowledge on this could opine as to what could be going on.
This solar energy story combined with previous gratuitous use of the "enlightenment" icon all point to one conclusion: Our own kdawson has gone granola! Make love, not wars, man. Peace in the Middle East!:)
I think you're thinking about road signs, whereas I'm talking about a substitute for the paint that is used to line roads and mark lanes. Fluorescent paint is not half as good as active lighting. The paint is subject to the elements and fades over time, becoming less and less safe in the process. Something that is only fluorescent is not as noticeable and safe as something that is both fluorescent and emits its own light.
But now that you mention it, there are many places in the U.S. that don't light their road signs (even the big green ones you see on interstates and beltways) and driving in those places at night is difficult as a result. The fluorescent markers don't do a good job, they just do a job that is commensurate with their cost. This new technology will bring down the cost of better alternatives in whatever field you can imagine. That was the whole point of the article.
I'm sorry, some of it isn't nonsense so much as you haven't made it clear exactly what you're doing with all the config file editing. I've been using Gentoo exclusively for years now, and I've found that just like most other flavors of Linux, once you've got everything the way you want it, that's it--no further maintenance or config file editing is required. It doesn't break or mysteriously stop working, which means I'm spending a lot more time using my computer instead of diagnosing software problems. That's why when you talk about "issues" in a general sense, I'm not really clear on what those might be.
It helps, of course, that I very seldom upgrade my hardware. If you're one of those people who buys a new Wacom tablet, scanner, printer, joystick, or whatever else every few weeks, then it would be unrealistic to think that hotplug or coldplug is going to keep you from doing the finessing that Gentoo often requires to get that stuff running. If not, and problems seem to crop up on a daily basis, then you could very well be doing something wrong;) It wouldn't hurt to share your issues over on the Gentoo forums. Those people are extremely helpful and are bound to get you through any Gentoo quirks you may have run into. Cheers!
Slashdot Mirror
The article is lean on the science and heavy on the fluff, but apparently their methodology involved assuming what they believed to be the technology-friendly stance on each of these issues, and then scoring Congress according to whether or not a member voted for a bill that supported that stance. This raises all sorts of issues. For example, how do you score a Senator or Representative when they vote against a free trade bill because it contains pork that would get rid of the estate tax? By the time it's been processed and mangled by the committees, very little legislation is "clean" enough so that you could claim that it is exclusively about one issue, or exclusively about another.
Furthermore, what do you do when there are two sides to an issue, and each side is presented as having technological interests in mind? (For example, "Computer export restrictions help domestic tech companies" vs. "Not having computer export restrictions helps domestic tech companies.") Are we supposed to assume that Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, through the prism of their infinite wisdom and impeccable judgment, have arrived at some sort of "correct" stance on these issues? Forgive me if I'm just a little skeptical.
It's all just been called the "iTunes Store" since this last September."
That's good because our stance as their customers had us grabbing our ankles, and our arms were starting to fall asleep.
Is it a Republican? Thanks, ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all night. Try the shrimp and remember to tip your wait staff! ;)
:)
I'm sorry, I know better but I couldn't resist
Relying on Slashvertising and assuming that it alone will seal the deal is at best overly- optimistic, and at worst downright irresponsible.
I don't like where you're coming from at all. Hey, congratulations, you are morally superior to us in every way. And don't forget, it is only when you lord news of your own charity over us that we can be shamed by it.
I feel like I was really out of the loop on this. I don't always have my finger and thumb on the pulse of technological issues, but I make an earnest attempt to. I knew about the $100 laptops from a long time ago, but this is the first I've heard of the $300 charity versions. But you know, I'm not some kind of Everyman here, just one man. Maybe my neighbors knew all about this and each bought two (although after looking at the final pledge numbers, that seems unlikely). So whatever kind of advertising they had for this failed me. Whether or not it failed another 300,000 other people is for you to decide.
[emphasis added]
Do you see that? That means that it's a constructive monopoly (you know, like I said). What that essentially means is that "It's not a monopoly per se, but it might as well be because there are (often financial) barriers to entry in the market" (you know, like I said). I'm just astounded that you would Google something, read the first sentence, and then assume that you've found new, conflicting information. It represents an astounding lack of intelligence and intellectual honesty on your part. Don't waste my time.
This may be the beer talking, but I just re-read your post and I seriously can't point to a single statement you made that is even true. It's not personal, I'm sure you were just trying to be helpful. It's just discouraging because I'm sure you will be modded up further as "informative", even though you're not informing anyone--you're feeding them lies. I mean even if you were to go so far as to break down every sentence into independent and dependent clauses, it reads like "wrong"..."wrong"..."nope"..."no"..."wrong"...do mods even verify what they moderate or do they just mod up whatever seems authoritative? :( You see that? That's a text frowny face. That represents my new attitude towards your post.
I just finished my comment when I noticed yours. Just to clarify, this isn't a "state-mandated" problem by any means. Also, the contract signed between the city and the cable company may not necessarily be exclusive--it may be that there are just significant financial barriers to entry in the market that have created a kind of constructive monopoly (nitpicking, I know, but it is important to distinguish between purely contractual and purely economic restrictions or else risk misleading others).
"Petitioning your city council" will do approximately jack shit. There is usually a formal process in place whereby disgruntled cable customers can voice their concerns, and it's well-timed with the franchise renewal process, which could be years and years away. Unless the cable provider were to breach (very unlikely--they'd practically have to burn down the town) then the battleground will be the franchise renewal period. I'm a lawyer by trade and have at least a passing familiarity with how these franchise agreements work. But you see, like most legal professionals, I tend to be a bit of a lush, and after my 6th beer it becomes harder and harder to link to the information that I know to be true. Feel free to Google away in my stead.
This isn't quite true. You see, there were market forces at work when the franchise agreement between Cox Cable and your town or county was being negotiated. Whenever your area was making a move from broadcast programming into the cable world, there were probably a number of cable television players vying for the contract. For whatever reason--we would hope, as a result of offering the most competitive terms--Cox got the contract:
1. Sometimes these agreements are exclusive, sometimes not. Sometimes they are written to not necessarily be exclusive, but they might as well be because the existing cable company owns all of the infrastructure and is unwilling to lease its property to a potential competitor. Other times, it is your local phone company that is responsible for keeping competition out. You see, many phone companies actually lease the space on the top of their phone poles to cable companies that need to use them to string cable lines. You want to talk about a racket? The price is calculated per pole and usually to the cable company's detriment. The phone company has a sweet, parasitic thing going, and is often either unwilling or contractually unable to jeopardize it by leasing to others. Incidentally, if you've ever stood on the sidelines while one utility company totally screws another utility, it's about the funniest thing in the world.
2. Note that franchise agreements are subject to renewal, and if you really felt like Cox wasn't doing right by its customers, you could raise those issues when it was time for the agreement to be renewed. There is a simple appeals process in place that covers that exact situation. It's not common, but it's been known to happen. Then, as Cox's world comes crashing down, their franchise agreement no more and their property has been sold off at fire-sale prices, you will see plenty of cable providers come courting, promising you the world.
You have a few options:
1. Run Windows natively but unplug your CAT-5 cable or disable your networking devices under the device manager. Having no internet access under Windows fixes this and many other problems nicely.
2. Are you really sure that the graphics applications you use require Microsoft Windows? I think that you would be very surprised by how good the support is for most Adobe products, including Photoshop, using WINE.
3. Run Windows and your graphics applications in a virtual environment using VMWare. Unless your graphics applications require advanced, DirectX-based rendering or some such thing (unlikely), then this will work great too.
Hope that helps!
I wholeheartedly discourage you to read Mr. Klemens' book and instead encourage you to rely on, for example, some kind of electronic forum where widespread misunderstanding and disinformation about intellectual property law runs rampant. If only such a thing actually existed, it would mean more work for lawyers. Oh well.
Thanks for clearing that up! The article you linked to mentions not only the time frame, but many other important details that are only glossed over in the original article. And this from the same news source! It makes me wish that it had been linked to in the summary instead of the one that was.
This is from the article:
The article does not say when that is supposed to happen, and like everybody else here I haven't read the 700-page report that the article refers to, only the article itself. What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades. If you don't plan on being alive 10-30 years from now (depending on the data you're relying on), then, well--I hope your life was successful and fulfilling. For the rest of us, we have a very real global problem on our hands that will become at least partially realized within our lifetimes. And you better believe we will be picking up the tab for it.
I for one welcome our tiny, non-joke-getting lobster stick men overlords!
Environmental solutions are often stigmatized as being incompatible with economic issues--that for every spotted owl you save, you put a lumberjack out of work and so on. Similarly, there is an ongoing misconception that money spent on environmental issues does not pay forward in a meaningful way, and that it just means less money for improving education, the economy, or a myriad of other governmental concerns. Finally, we have evidence that a nation need not sacrifice economic growth for the sake of environmental responsibility.
I've read their website and I watched their demo, and I'm just sure there is some kind of catch. Could someone who has been using this service for a while report if there have been any unexpected surprises on their phone bill? Is the quality like Skype i.e. is it sometimes cackly and doesn't handle bidirectional speech well?
Sidenote: It doesn't help either that I speak Spanish and keep reading the name of their service as "Hah Hah". You know like, "Ha hah, the joke's on you when we bill you three dollars a minute 18 months from now..."
Inform me, please.
Those are valid points. You just hit upon some of what makes Ubuntu so appealing to new users: the small size, ease of configuration and so on. My point is that we owe a greater duty to new users to make sure that what they are installing is more or less "quirk free".
But even then, "quirk" is a bit of an understatement--we're talking about breaking net access, crashing the X server and so on. It's semi-serious stuff that would leave a new user absolutely baffled. The intermediate users will know to check the forums to solve any problems, and the advanced ones will already know what to do. No, it's the people who are picking up Linux for the first time with whom we want to make the best impression. That's why these upgrade problems are so hurtful to new adoption of the OS--they affect the very people who we're trying to welcome into the fold.
No, this is an offical, stable, release. Nobody knows what the hell you're talking about. If it were marked unstable, then sure--problems would be inevitable. But it's an official, stable release. Anybody who bothered to click on the articles would have ascertained that. Get your facts straight before you post, please.
Will it be replaced with a one-button mouse?
*zing!*
Me three (Firefox RC3 under Gentoo Linux). What I have noticed is that most of the people who complain about memory leaks and crashes seem to be running Windows. Could it be that the Firefox binary is being compiled a certain way, leaving it more susceptible to these sorts of problems? Or is it just that the user is running Windows, which in itself is more susceptible to crashes? Perhaps someone with more technical knowledge on this could opine as to what could be going on.
This solar energy story combined with previous gratuitous use of the "enlightenment" icon all point to one conclusion: Our own kdawson has gone granola! Make love, not wars, man. Peace in the Middle East! :)
I think you're thinking about road signs, whereas I'm talking about a substitute for the paint that is used to line roads and mark lanes. Fluorescent paint is not half as good as active lighting. The paint is subject to the elements and fades over time, becoming less and less safe in the process. Something that is only fluorescent is not as noticeable and safe as something that is both fluorescent and emits its own light.
But now that you mention it, there are many places in the U.S. that don't light their road signs (even the big green ones you see on interstates and beltways) and driving in those places at night is difficult as a result. The fluorescent markers don't do a good job, they just do a job that is commensurate with their cost. This new technology will bring down the cost of better alternatives in whatever field you can imagine. That was the whole point of the article.
I'm sorry, some of it isn't nonsense so much as you haven't made it clear exactly what you're doing with all the config file editing. I've been using Gentoo exclusively for years now, and I've found that just like most other flavors of Linux, once you've got everything the way you want it, that's it--no further maintenance or config file editing is required. It doesn't break or mysteriously stop working, which means I'm spending a lot more time using my computer instead of diagnosing software problems. That's why when you talk about "issues" in a general sense, I'm not really clear on what those might be.
;) It wouldn't hurt to share your issues over on the Gentoo forums. Those people are extremely helpful and are bound to get you through any Gentoo quirks you may have run into. Cheers!
It helps, of course, that I very seldom upgrade my hardware. If you're one of those people who buys a new Wacom tablet, scanner, printer, joystick, or whatever else every few weeks, then it would be unrealistic to think that hotplug or coldplug is going to keep you from doing the finessing that Gentoo often requires to get that stuff running. If not, and problems seem to crop up on a daily basis, then you could very well be doing something wrong