Nonsense! After all, it's already on your hard drive in your browser cache. That would be like someone giving you a book and making you pinky swear not to read beyond the title before joining their super-secret club. I refuse to consider it stealing when the 'object' has effectively been given to me.
This entire thread is just silly. There exist a myriad of ways to protect content on the Internet, a simple.htpasswd file comes to mind in this situation. Taking action against people for redistributing the content is understandable and encouraged, but taking action against people for pointing out (linking) something you're distributing on your network is absolutely laughable.
Am I stealing service by doing this? Is it "hacking"?
You don't even have to switch useragents or use Google cache to see the answers, just scroll waaaaaayyyyyy down to see the answers. It's not stealing, it's cleaning!
The people in a room could do any software process -- although it would require a whole continent of people, and a whole lot of telephones, to make some calculations proceed at anywhere near "real time".
Does real-time operation even matter? Countless people have essentially piggybacked on computers to speed up calculations, it's nothing new and shouldn't be patentable, as that's the very purpose of a computer. How about this: "If someone can do something mentally and achieve the same result with nothing but simple tools (or just nothing), that 'something' shouldn't be patentable." While that doesn't take care of business model patents, it effectively rules out software patents and leaves everything else alone(, at least unless telekinesis becomes a reality later on).
They know better then to call newly written software done.
So three and a half years is early in the development process? I guess that means Hurd's only 'slightly behind schedule'. Really, in the hands of Google, the 'beta' tag is only a way to keep things sounding 'hip and new' and to avoid liability when something screws up.
Even if it were ten seconds for everyone on the planet, it wouldn't amount to much. People just don't work that well in parallel, it would probably be spent typing a few lines, staring at a TV, or entertaining an idle thought. If you want to get into labor costs, I'd be much more interested in the losses due to drowsy, inattentive, and 'sick' workers in the day or two after the switch.
With the planet spinning, wouldn't the elevator be more or less slung outwards, in effect 'pulling' it at the area least influenced by the Earth's gravity?
Then again, most people don't turn on their monitors to stare at bark, also bark tends to have less...orange to it, at least with the older trees. Why not something more lively? While on the subject of trees, they could add a nice green to it, leaving only some of the brown. Perhaps a darker brown and some red, like autumn leaves. Better yet, why not change the default theme each stable release? Change is good and they have several months to think of a new look. If you're trying to make a distro all things to all people, put more thought into the look as well as the functionality.
I agree with the sentiment that universities (and the tax payers) not fund networks that won't be used properly. I realize that a lot of people do use the networks for perfectly valid uses, according to the evidence the bulk of traffic on educational networks is not legitimate (legitimate being for the purposes of education or legal personal uses.)
And would it be proper to take away one of the most useful tools (network access outside of dedicated 'computer labs')? I don't have the paper to back it up, but I'm assuming the cost of network access is covered in the outrageous cost of textbooks and tuition.
The amazing thing is that many students are learning occupations that are dependent on IP and yet continue to ignore it. I wonder who they expect to provide them a paycheck once they become producers?
You don't get rich off music (at least if you're the one writing it), many games bomb for good reason (Though you can always aspire to get bought out by EA, I suppose.), and universities aren't for aspiring screen actors. Don't even get me started on 'art degrees'.
Or would they rather go the inefficient route of millions of one-offs?
As it should be. Even entertainment has its value, but that doesn't mean that a week, or even a year of brilliance should be rewarded for a lifetime. If those one or two works were all you had in you, move on to something else. If you're talking about patents, software/business model patents are stupid and the rest require effort to infringe upon; people aren't going to copy your innovative new engine left and right, and you can get a good sum of money from whoever does.
The old behavior is always better, until you start to use the new behavior.
If I was doing better with the old behavior, there's something wrong with the new behavior; let me turn the damn thing off if I so choose to. 'For your own good' forced features are stupid. Remember all the bitching and moaning when search suggestions were implemented? I still can't decide on the damn thing, I somewhat like that one, but the moment I'm sick of the accidental, unrelated searches, I can disable it. I like having the spell-check, too. It would redline almost everything at first, but now, after months of adding words, it works beautifully. More importantly, if I didn't want to spend months mercilessly beating the right mouse button to death, I could have disabled it the moment I got sick of it.
When FF2 came out I didn't like the close buttons on the tabs, or the way that they were curved and didn't fit in with Windows' tabs, I didn't like the bland new icons, and it all seemed like a bunch of hype.
That, too, was a shitty non-feature (at least until my last mouse screwed up and a middle-click would repeat and close two or three), but at least I could still do things the old way.
Unless you're plan on tossing little grenade babies at people, it's going to take more than a night of 'work'. Don't forget that you'll have to pay to feed the little bombers for several years (until they can run fast enough, wear/carry a weapon and follow orders), as well as convince them to throw away their lives for your goals. (Actually, the last part shouldn't be too hard, since children can be rather impressionable.)
In the long run, robots are much cheaper and more sustainable than armed fanatics. It takes years and tons of money to get one or two decent crazy people, and then there's the cost of guns, bomb belts, and all that crazy stuff. Also, once that unit's out, it'll take several years to produce and train a replacement. Robots, on the other hand, require more planning, but can be completed on a much shorter timescale than a legion of nutjobs with bombs. Another bonus is that once the initial design has been worked out, replacing a destroyed unit will only take days to a couple weeks to produce and ship.
tl;dr - The only reason to use a human is the psychological effect of seeing someone blowing himself up.
How about...close enough to stick? Sure, everything has a great deal of empty space, but my hand hasn't disintegrated yet. (Though now I'm wondering if this means a huge block of ice counts as a single structure while liquid water doesn't.)
So? What does it matter with faith-based currency? From now on, I'm referring to $1,000 as a HyperDollar. The Euro doesn't look so hot anymore, does it?
Around 1995 it was possible to buy starter kits for internet service providers. The kit came with a month or so of access and software which would configure your system to dial the ISP.
I also recall about five minutes of ads per hour pointing out similar offers from Cox and (then) SBC. Though, a better example would probably be a restaurant gift certificate for a free meal, since a lot of those seem to be limited to specific items on the menu. (Though the USPTO seems to be in a magical fairy wonderland where anything involving the Internet or a computer is on an entirely different level, so I may be wrong.)
Offtopic, but I really, really feel like saying it.
And what about AOL CD's. You might have been given it with a magazine. Sounds pretty obvious to me.
'Might have'? I half-felt as if the magazine was a free extra after a year or two.
Ok, I'm really stepping out of my comfort zone in this argument, but do you really need to put in any effort to avoid slashing at a kid's wang? If there's no difference, just save that shit for plastic surgeons.
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No, this is more like saying 'don't look at my car'.
Nonsense! After all, it's already on your hard drive in your browser cache. That would be like someone giving you a book and making you pinky swear not to read beyond the title before joining their super-secret club. I refuse to consider it stealing when the 'object' has effectively been given to me.
.htpasswd file comes to mind in this situation. Taking action against people for redistributing the content is understandable and encouraged, but taking action against people for pointing out (linking) something you're distributing on your network is absolutely laughable.
This entire thread is just silly. There exist a myriad of ways to protect content on the Internet, a simple
Really? Now I want a rocket-powered radio/computer.
Really, in the hands of Google, the 'beta' tag is only a way to keep things sounding 'hip and new' and to avoid liability when something screws up.
Even if it were ten seconds for everyone on the planet, it wouldn't amount to much. People just don't work that well in parallel, it would probably be spent typing a few lines, staring at a TV, or entertaining an idle thought. If you want to get into labor costs, I'd be much more interested in the losses due to drowsy, inattentive, and 'sick' workers in the day or two after the switch.
With the planet spinning, wouldn't the elevator be more or less slung outwards, in effect 'pulling' it at the area least influenced by the Earth's gravity?
Nah. Let MS keep the chairs, I really don't want to have to pick a distro before sitting or throwing a childish tantrum.
Then again, most people don't turn on their monitors to stare at bark, also bark tends to have less...orange to it, at least with the older trees. Why not something more lively? While on the subject of trees, they could add a nice green to it, leaving only some of the brown. Perhaps a darker brown and some red, like autumn leaves. Better yet, why not change the default theme each stable release? Change is good and they have several months to think of a new look.
If you're trying to make a distro all things to all people, put more thought into the look as well as the functionality.
Oh, god! Two of them? We're going to be up to our necks in robots in no time!
Unless you're plan on tossing little grenade babies at people, it's going to take more than a night of 'work'. Don't forget that you'll have to pay to feed the little bombers for several years (until they can run fast enough, wear/carry a weapon and follow orders), as well as convince them to throw away their lives for your goals. (Actually, the last part shouldn't be too hard, since children can be rather impressionable.)
In the long run, robots are much cheaper and more sustainable than armed fanatics. It takes years and tons of money to get one or two decent crazy people, and then there's the cost of guns, bomb belts, and all that crazy stuff. Also, once that unit's out, it'll take several years to produce and train a replacement.
Robots, on the other hand, require more planning, but can be completed on a much shorter timescale than a legion of nutjobs with bombs. Another bonus is that once the initial design has been worked out, replacing a destroyed unit will only take days to a couple weeks to produce and ship.
tl;dr - The only reason to use a human is the psychological effect of seeing someone blowing himself up.
How about...close enough to stick? Sure, everything has a great deal of empty space, but my hand hasn't disintegrated yet. (Though now I'm wondering if this means a huge block of ice counts as a single structure while liquid water doesn't.)
So? What does it matter with faith-based currency? From now on, I'm referring to $1,000 as a HyperDollar. The Euro doesn't look so hot anymore, does it?
Would you rather someone ran it through Babelfish a few times?
Finally, a use for those old notebooks: I'll donate them to Google!
Offtopic, but I really, really feel like saying it.'Might have'? I half-felt as if the magazine was a free extra after a year or two.
Ok, I'm really stepping out of my comfort zone in this argument, but do you really need to put in any effort to avoid slashing at a kid's wang? If there's no difference, just save that shit for plastic surgeons.
Or perhaps copyright infringement drastically increases the bandwidth of the downloader. I'm getting ripped off, back to dial-up!