Your numbers are bogus. Purchasing power has been declining since the mid 70's. You see, things like 9/11 actually contribute to the GDP, as calculated. Sure, people died. But the US hired a bunch of security thugs for airports, we had workers on ground zero operating around the clock, people had to shell out a mint to rehab and repair all the building in downtown Manhatten. All that "economic activity" is considered a plus.
When you strip away money going nowhere, our GDP has been in the shitter for quite a while.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Let me tell you, prior to WWII the average american was dirt poor. And considering all of my Great Grandparents were poor immigrants, THAT was better than where they were coming from.
Having to pay for college out of pocket, I can't compete with someone who is either a) coming from a state sponsored school or b) from a family of means that absorbed the cost of his/her education.
I actually like reading interviews with Linus. At least when it's coming from the horse's mouth it doesn't seem to be as bad as reading a rehash of a misunderstood reference to a retelling of a press release.
There are days that I wonder if E.M. Forrester forsaw the Internet when he wrote "The Machine Stops."
Up until now it's been completely unethical, but just on this hairy side of legal. Short of a memo stating that "we are making all this IP crap up" they are in the clear even if they are wrong. Even flagrantly wrong. It's very hard to prove intent, and most laws against this sort of thing have an intent clause.
Granted, if I get busted with a loose joint and I have another in my pocket I'd probably be busted with intent to sell. But lawyers don't seem to be comfortable making those quantum assumptions about fellow lawyers.
Not to mention the countless explorers who died really horrible deaths learning the hard way about things. The Curies died as a result of their exposure to radiation. One x-ray techician (name escapes me) used to calibrate flouroscopes by sticking his hand in and tweaking the picture till it looked right. His entire hand necratized eventually and the infection killed him. Then of course there are the chemists who learned about the explosive nature of nitrogen bonds the hard way.
Those are the type of people I hope to run into in the afterlife. Those that died doing something, not of something.
I'm using a slightly different approach. My wife and I are developing a hosting business on the side. She goes out to people's houses to tutor them on the Internet while she's home with the baby. She makes pretty good money at it to. I get called in to do rocket science type stuff, like wire a small network or set up a website.
Along the way she occasionally runs into someone who runs a business and needs hosting. We have been snapping up a few small $5-$10/month clients, and also host a few non-profits who needed some server-side scripting stuff at around $30. At this point our DSL line into the house is paying for itself.
My plan is to keep adding small mom and pop enterprises until it starts to rival what I'm making during at my day job.
The key is that we have that social in. We aren't Sach's, and we aren't Walmart. We are that nice young couple who Estelle recommended to use who teaches computers, and hosts internet sites, and they are oh so good at explaining to the tech support line about what isn't working with the computer.
We have yet to advertise. Our customers tell all their friends about us.
It all started with sending my wife over to give the former CEO of our organization a few computer lessons. Next thing we know, she told a few friends who after she dropped by told a few friends...
The Wizard of Oz required a good deal more effort to develop than any of Van Gogh's paintings. If someone can come along, and simply re-badge your text, verbatim, that's wrong.
Now, if someone doesn't like the way it ended, and goes off and writes their own version, that's cool. Science Fiction writers to that all the time to each other.
I actually have no qualms about the Disney company fighting to maintain copyrights on their old work. Of course nobody really wants to re-sell steamboat willy or Snow White. The battles in court are actually not copyright battles but trademark battles. That's where I start to think we go wrong.
If I write a story about a british spy name James Bond from MI6 who sleeps around and drinks dry martini's I'd be sued by the Flemming Estate in a heartbeat. That's a clear case of my just lifting another's ideas, and their trade mark. I'm trying to capitalize on the well known works of the late writer, and the popularity of the movies, to sell my own works. I deserve to be sued.
Now, suppose I start a daycare center and I plaster disney characters all over the place. Again, I'm inapropriately associating myself with the Disney company, and again, they are probably right to sue me.
I would point out that these are not "artifacts of culture" no matter what the movie studios say. They are fictional characters. Someone indeed did "make the stuff up." That's the idea!
Now I would be quite willing to relase some of the stuff I make up to the public domain. Imagine a set of fictional characters in a fictional settings designed to knit together like an artificial mythology. I have fun thinking things like that up. I would really enjoy reading all adventures people develop using those creations.
I would also be slogging through 90% of pure dreck, and worse. People would be writing porn, snuff fiction, and creatively nasty stuff that would utterly stain the spirit in which the works were created. How many really nasty usenet posts star the characters from the Brady Bunch and Star Trek. Too many.
I would probably write in a clause that allows me to exercise some editorial control over what becomes of my characters. Sure, I'd be a puritan nazi who is censoring the works of others. But if I had no such control in the first place, I would never have created the works in the first place.
Which brings us back to the whole BSD vs. GPL license. One says "take my stuff". The other says "take my stuff, but according to spirit in which it was given."
Neo: Do you always look at the Matrix encoded like that?
Cipher: The decryption routines work for the construct. You get used to it after a while. I don't even see the code. I see Blonde, Brunette, Redhead...
Win4Lin runs a complete copy of Window98 inside a Linux OS. For $60/copy It re-uses the Windows98 licenses the district already paid for. It runs Office, and photoshop, and AutoCad, and all the stuff they ALREADY PAID FOR.
And what's more, it will run exactly the same way it used to run. No compadibility layer. AND it doesn't run DirectX games.
It's a perfect fix for a lab environment. All of what you need to run. Nothing that you don't need.
Win4Lin also runs will in a X-terminal environment. All those old PC's can be re-cycled as terminals. I use it personally on my Gentoo laptop for all the goofy network tools that haven't been ported to Linux yet. It's hilarious to see a WindowsME desktop right next to a KDE menu.
BTW, I'll be happy to be a reference as a place where Linux runs successfully. I am the Senior Network Engineer at the Franklin Institute Science Museum. I switched our network to Linux before Linux was cool.
I wrote a redirect system for a coffee shop that was installed back in September. I use a script to knit data together between iptables and dhcpd to sort out who paid and who didn't. A copy of tclhttpd provides the web interface.
If your IP wasn't pulled from DHCP, or you mac address isn't listed as a paying customer you are redirected to the homepage of the coffee shop. It's actually a specially formated 404 error page, so I'm probably in the clear. Just remove the link to the home page.
We do offer hardwire links, so I could also claim that the wireless network is simply an extension of a wired network and thus the gateway is not a wireless gateway.
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When you strip away money going nowhere, our GDP has been in the shitter for quite a while.
We aren't hiring the poor destitute dirt farmers. We are hiring the Brahmans.
Nah, Afganistan has them beat for cost of living.
Having to pay for college out of pocket, I can't compete with someone who is either a) coming from a state sponsored school or b) from a family of means that absorbed the cost of his/her education.
I wonder if Ireland will take me back...
Turn Undead might take care of the lawyer. But as soon as litigation starts scavengers come out of the cracks.
And what spells does a level 7 cleric have to clear it up?
I have a box running a bunch of Win4Lin instances. Even better.
There are days that I wonder if E.M. Forrester forsaw the Internet when he wrote "The Machine Stops."
Granted, if I get busted with a loose joint and I have another in my pocket I'd probably be busted with intent to sell. But lawyers don't seem to be comfortable making those quantum assumptions about fellow lawyers.
I just can't imagine what it must be like to be constantly having to explain the same damn thing over and over again.
Hang on, my first job here was helpdesk. Nevermind.
Those are the type of people I hope to run into in the afterlife. Those that died doing something, not of something.
4. ????
5. PROFIT!!!
Along the way she occasionally runs into someone who runs a business and needs hosting. We have been snapping up a few small $5-$10/month clients, and also host a few non-profits who needed some server-side scripting stuff at around $30. At this point our DSL line into the house is paying for itself.
My plan is to keep adding small mom and pop enterprises until it starts to rival what I'm making during at my day job.
The key is that we have that social in. We aren't Sach's, and we aren't Walmart. We are that nice young couple who Estelle recommended to use who teaches computers, and hosts internet sites, and they are oh so good at explaining to the tech support line about what isn't working with the computer.
We have yet to advertise. Our customers tell all their friends about us.
It all started with sending my wife over to give the former CEO of our organization a few computer lessons. Next thing we know, she told a few friends who after she dropped by told a few friends...
Yes actually. The XP liscence comes with downgrade rights. Or at least ours did when we negotiated our site license.
In a black and white world, it's always nice to be plaid.
Bush would also be more apt to be out of a job than his predecessor too.
I was hoping you'd squirm away like a cockroach when the lights go on.
So, Democrican or Republicrat?
Now, if someone doesn't like the way it ended, and goes off and writes their own version, that's cool. Science Fiction writers to that all the time to each other.
I actually have no qualms about the Disney company fighting to maintain copyrights on their old work. Of course nobody really wants to re-sell steamboat willy or Snow White. The battles in court are actually not copyright battles but trademark battles. That's where I start to think we go wrong.
If I write a story about a british spy name James Bond from MI6 who sleeps around and drinks dry martini's I'd be sued by the Flemming Estate in a heartbeat. That's a clear case of my just lifting another's ideas, and their trade mark. I'm trying to capitalize on the well known works of the late writer, and the popularity of the movies, to sell my own works. I deserve to be sued.
Now, suppose I start a daycare center and I plaster disney characters all over the place. Again, I'm inapropriately associating myself with the Disney company, and again, they are probably right to sue me.
I would point out that these are not "artifacts of culture" no matter what the movie studios say. They are fictional characters. Someone indeed did "make the stuff up." That's the idea!
Now I would be quite willing to relase some of the stuff I make up to the public domain. Imagine a set of fictional characters in a fictional settings designed to knit together like an artificial mythology. I have fun thinking things like that up. I would really enjoy reading all adventures people develop using those creations.
I would also be slogging through 90% of pure dreck, and worse. People would be writing porn, snuff fiction, and creatively nasty stuff that would utterly stain the spirit in which the works were created. How many really nasty usenet posts star the characters from the Brady Bunch and Star Trek. Too many.
I would probably write in a clause that allows me to exercise some editorial control over what becomes of my characters. Sure, I'd be a puritan nazi who is censoring the works of others. But if I had no such control in the first place, I would never have created the works in the first place.
Which brings us back to the whole BSD vs. GPL license. One says "take my stuff". The other says "take my stuff, but according to spirit in which it was given."
Neo: Do you always look at the Matrix encoded like that?
Cipher: The decryption routines work for the construct. You get used to it after a while. I don't even see the code. I see Blonde, Brunette, Redhead...
Win4Lin runs a complete copy of Window98 inside a Linux OS. For $60/copy It re-uses the Windows98 licenses the district already paid for. It runs Office, and photoshop, and AutoCad, and all the stuff they ALREADY PAID FOR.
And what's more, it will run exactly the same way it used to run. No compadibility layer. AND it doesn't run DirectX games.
It's a perfect fix for a lab environment. All of what you need to run. Nothing that you don't need.
Win4Lin also runs will in a X-terminal environment. All those old PC's can be re-cycled as terminals. I use it personally on my Gentoo laptop for all the goofy network tools that haven't been ported to Linux yet. It's hilarious to see a WindowsME desktop right next to a KDE menu.
BTW, I'll be happy to be a reference as a place where Linux runs successfully. I am the Senior Network Engineer at the Franklin Institute Science Museum. I switched our network to Linux before Linux was cool.
Funny, there are times when Dr. Sbaitso did sound like my real-life therapist...
To an untrained ear the extra noise makes it sound like there is more to the signal. To anyone who appreciates a symphony however, it's simply noise.
Kinda like the difference between a buffet and a 7 course meal.
Eee gads. I thought the porn industry was vapid enough. Throwing boy and girl bands into the mix sounds like a koan: What is emptier than empty?
Perl isn't evil? I guess it's just misunderstood.
I wrote a redirect system for a coffee shop that was installed back in September. I use a script to knit data together between iptables and dhcpd to sort out who paid and who didn't. A copy of tclhttpd provides the web interface.
If your IP wasn't pulled from DHCP, or you mac address isn't listed as a paying customer you are redirected to the homepage of the coffee shop. It's actually a specially formated 404 error page, so I'm probably in the clear. Just remove the link to the home page.
We do offer hardwire links, so I could also claim that the wireless network is simply an extension of a wired network and thus the gateway is not a wireless gateway.