Comment This is not news (Score 1) 83
I figured out how to disable beta months ago.
Comment Re:Wrong risk ... (Score 1) 151
Except that in this case the law was very plain and it was obvious that it was being violated. I may not like the DMCA, but it doesn't take a legal brainiac to know that refusing to comply with take-down requests (what Kim's was doing with his links vs files argument) will lead to greater legal retaliation.
What are you talking about? KDC followed the advice of his lawyers and complied with DMCA takedown notices. He was set up in a nasty sting operation where the FBI asked him to not take down a particular file (or files) in order to aid them in an investigation. He cooperated with the FBI and this is what they busted him for.
For example, the Wikipedia gives Dotcom's perspective:
In regard to Megaupload, Dotcom believes the company had actively tried to prevent copyright infringement -- its terms of service forced users to agree they would not post copyrighted material to the website. Companies or individuals with concerns that their copyright material was being posted on Megaupload were given direct access to the website to delete infringing links. Megaupload also employed 20 staff dedicated to taking down material which might infringe copyright.
KDC was hosting files so it would be silly for him to use a "links vs files" argument as you suggest. It would have also been extremely stupid for him to ignore DMCA takedown notices because obeying those notices is what gave him "safe harbor" protection. You may be a legal brainiac but what you are suggesting makes no sense and has nothing to do with reality.
How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive 438
itwbennett writes: For too long, it looked like SSD capacity would always lag well behind hard disk drives, which were pushing into the 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB. That seems to be ending. In September, Samsung announced a 3.2TB SSD drive. And during an investor webcast last week, Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Meanwhile, hard drive technology has hit the wall in many ways. They can't really spin the drives faster than 7,200 RPM without increasing heat and the rate of failure. All hard drives have now is the capacity argument; speed is all gone. Oh, and price. We'll have to wait and see on that.
Comment Re:Wrong risk ... (Score 1) 151
You can't plan for stuff like that.
What? Yes, you absolutely can. Yes, it was absolutely predictable. Yes. YES! Look, yes. The answer to all your objecting questions is yes. Yes, he could and should have predicted that the USA would do its best to sow his ground with salt. Just fucking look at us. LOOK AT US. Of course we would do that.
Even if you can predict that no rules/laws will apply, how can you reasonably plan for that contingency? What would those plans look like? Should KDC have given up business and become a survivalist?
My wholehearted prediction would have been that KDC was on the entitled side of the justice gap and as long as he had good lawyers and followed their advice then he would have nothing to worry about. The Pirate Bay getting repeatedly stomped on was not a surprise but the attack on KDC was a huge shock to me. I still find it amazing.
Comment Re:Sleep well, sweet dreams (Score 2) 337
Electric Sleep?
Comment Re:And the floodgates open (Score 3, Informative) 706
Why don't other countries have a net neutrality problem? Because they have competition among their ISPs. If an ISP tries to deliberately slow down a popular website to extort the site for extra payments, it doesn't put pressure on the website to pay. Instead it puts pressure on the ISP's customers to switch to another ISP. In most of the rest of the world, any ISP trying to pull this stunt puts itself out of business.
It only works in the U.S. because these ISPs have government-granted monopolies over the local customer base. The customer can't flee to a different ISP because there is none - the local government has made it illegal for there to be a competitor. Essentially, net neutrality is more government regulation to solve a problem caused by government regulation.
According to Ars Techinca (and many others) UK regulators officially mock US over ISP "competition":
Here's how US regulators do a broadband plan: talk about competition even while admitting there isn't enough, then tinker around the edges with running fiber to "anchor institutions" and start collecting real data on US broadband use.
Here's how they do it in the UK: order incumbent telco BT to share its fiber lines with any ISP who is willing to pay. In places where BT hasn't yet run fiber, order the company to share its ducts and poles with anyone who wants to run said fiber. In the 14 percent of the UK without meaningful broadband competition, slap price controls on Internet access to keep people from getting gouged. [...]
"Aside from small urban countries with highly concentrated populations, like Singapore, the main countries which are currently leading in the rollout and take-up of super-fast broadband are those which have had significant government intervention to support deployment, such as Japan and South Korea."
I've Googled around and I can't find any evidence that backs up your implication that consumers benefit from less government regulation of ISPs. Everything I've seen says the benefits in non-US countries stem from greater government intervention.
The nuanced Republican stance you refer to seems to be a code-phrase for BS. IMO the core of the problem is there is a lot of BS flying around because our corporate controlled "fair and balanced" media (including the NYT) refuse to call out politicians on outright lies. This gives a decided advantage to those who lie more. With no checks and balances from the media, public debate is mired in giant echo chambers filled with BS.
Comment Re:Disturbing (Score 1) 331
Thanks. I seem to be the one with an outdated mindset. I didn't know about that rule of thumb. Back when I went to school, I got by with a little help from my parents but mostly with a scholarship, loans, and a nearly full-time job. But tuition at an Ivy League school was only $5K/year and my starting salary after I got out was around $20K so even getting loans for the entire tuition would have matched your rule.
I'm glad you were able to buck the trend and find a way to pay for college that did not leave you in a financial hole you could not escape from. I still think this is not possible for the majority of students today. Sure, anyone may have been able to get the situation you found but there are not enough situations like that to go around for everyone. Having a system that puts so many college graduates into an inescapable financial black hole is very damaging to our society. It is like eating our seed corn.
When I went to school, situations like yours were open to almost everyone, even people going to Ivy League Universities.
Comment Re:Disturbing (Score 1) 331
Perhaps your mindset on this is a little outdated. I know mine was and that is the heart of the problem. For many decades student loans made sense. They were a terrific investment because the increase in your earning potential from going to college was fantastic. It paid for the loans many times over.
Unfortunately, both sides of the equation have changed drastically which has really screwed over the majority (I am guessing) of college students. On one hand, the cost of college has gone through the roof, vastly outpacing inflation and on the other hand, the ROI for going to college has tanked.
Taking out loans to go to college used to be the best investment you could make. Now you are likely to get screwed over. My editorial take on this is that it is a perfect example of capitalism run rampant. At various stages in the system, people have found ways to take advantage of (i.e. monetize) the general perception that taking out loans to go to college was a great investment. They did this by turning it into a lousy investment. It is no different from fleecing neophytes in the stock market.
Education used to be the cornerstone of the American Dream. Turning it into a terrible investment is extremely toxic to our society.
This is related to another result of extreme capitalism:
No matter how small and cheap and crappy something is, someone will figure out a way to make the same thing smaller and cheaper and crappier.
Comment Re:VERY POSITIVE: Systemd is well-modularized (Score 1) 928
All they've done in systemd is write C code to start up services that used to be started instead by shell scripts and added the ability to make dependency resolution automatic so that services are only started when they need to be.
If that had been all then there would not be this huge controversy. You are describing a very stripped down version of uselessd which is already a stripped down version of systemd. You are ignoring 98% of what is most objectionable about systemd by reducing it to the least controversial component.
ISTM such vast oversimplifications add fuel to the fire and further polarize the debate.
Comment Re:Prison time (Score 4, Informative) 275
No, it's called "asset forfeiture" and it does happen far too often. Hell, happening once is far too often.
In the US there are two kinds of asset forfeiture, criminal and civil:
There are two types of forfeiture cases, criminal and civil. Approximately half of all forfeiture cases practiced today are civil, although many of those are filed in parallel to a related criminal case. In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a third-party claimant. [...]
In civil cases, the owner need not be judged guilty of any crime; [...] In contrast, criminal forfeiture is usually carried out in a sentence following a conviction and is a punitive act against the offender.
I don't want to put words in your mouth but I think the type of forfeiture you so strenuously (and correctly) object to is called civil asset forfeiture or civil forfeiture for short.
Comment Re:Some Sense Restored? (Score 1) 522
The problem with supporting multiple init systems is that each package that provides a daemon needs to support all of them.
I agree with you in theory. In this case SysV init has been around for ages so SysV init scripts already exist for almost all packages. Just don't remove those and there is very little additional work required to maintain the SysV init scripts.
Yes, new packages will need to support both for a while, but this is a tiny fraction of the work to create and maintain a new service. It is a very small price to pay in order to get some breathing room and a graceful transition period.
It will give people a chance to put down the torches and pitchforks for a while. One of the biggest objections to systemd was that it was being rammed down our throats whether we wanted it or not, whether it was ready or not, etc. Look at Pulse Audio. After a few painful years, it was finally ready for non-beta use. Systemd should be given a similar incubation period during which people can easily choose to use it or not.
On a more poetic note::
Before the creation of Arda (The World), Melkor was the most powerful of the Ainur. Because of his unique station, he sought to create wills in the manner of his own Creator, so he alone would venture sometimes into the Void in search of the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire, which would grant him this ability. But he never found it, as it is with Eru only. He had sought to fill the Void with sentient beings and was dissatisfied with Eru's abandonment of it. Instead, in what he hoped would be an expression of his own originality and creativity, he contended with Eru (God) in the Music of the Ainur, introducing what he perceived to be themes of his own.
Unlike his fellow Ainu Aule, Melkor was too proud to admit that his creations were simply discoveries wholly made possible by, and therefore "belonging" to, Eru. Instead, Melkor aspired to the level of Eru, the true Creator of all possibilities.
During the Great Music of the Ainur, Melkor attempted to alter the Music and introduced what he believed to be elements purely of his own design. As part of these efforts, he drew many weaker-willed Ainur to him, creating a counter to Eru's main theme. Ironically, these attempts did not truly subvert the Music, but only elaborated Eru's original intentions: the Music of Eru took on depth and beauty precisely because of the strife and sadness Melkor's disharmonies (and their rectification) introduced.
Since the Great Music of the Ainur stood as template for all of history and all of material creation in the Middle-earth cycle (it was first sung before Time, and then the universe was made in its image), there was an aspect of everything in Middle-earth that came of Melkor's malign influence; everything had been "corrupted". Tolkien elaborates on this in Morgoth's Ring, drawing an analogy between the One Ring, into which Sauron committed much of his power, and all of Arda -- "Morgoth's Ring" -- which contains and is corrupted by the residue of Melkor's power until the Remaking of the World.
Comment Different tools for different jobs (Score 1) 365
Alan Perlis said:
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
The work on the Linux kernel by Linus is essentially the "first time" which is why he prefers C. It can be used as a bottom-up language. OOP and C++ are top-down. The BOSS-MOOL group are rewriting something that already exists so they are using a top-down approach. Both Linus and the BOSS-MOOL group are using the right tool for the job. The jobs are different so the right tool is different.
Comment Re:Fermion that is its own antiparticle (Score 2) 99
what does it mean for a particle to be its own antiparticle?
In theoretical calculations if you reverse the charge (C), the parity (P), and time (T) of a particle, you get its antiparticle. A simpler (and less accurate) way of saying this is that antiparticles are normal particles traveling backward in time. This is not just a novelty, it is important for doing quantum field theory calculations (see Feynman-Stueckelberg interpretation).
So a particle is its own antiparticle if you reverse all three (CPT) and get the same thing. As the OP said, this is not unusual. It is only unusual for fermions. If two of them collide with each other then they can be annihilated and turn into another particle-antiparticle pair, just like photons can. Since they are neutral (I *think*, due to C symmetry) they don't attract each other like positrons and electrons do so you have to make special arrangements to get them to collide.
Does that mean that they're neutral to matter and anti-matter, or do they still somehow fall into one of those categories?
If there were an anti-matter universe then the photons there would be the same as the photons here. Same thing with Majorana fermions. I guess you could say they are both matter and anti-matter. You could also say they are neither matter nor anti-matter.
Comment Re:PROOF (Score 1) 275
I'd mod you up if I had points.
Yes, it is a publicity stunt, and yes, it won't convince people who are invested in the conspiracy theory, and yes, it does not prove the original photo was authentic. But as you said, it does give a plausible explanation for the lighting in the original photo.
Comment Feynman also said: (Score 1) 795
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Unfortunately, many people (on both sides) seem to think science means "trust the experts". This is the gist of the fine article.
