Regarding Pantone, that is a problem sure. But localizing GIMP and extending it, I have no doubt is something that will happen. Debian unstable already contains Chinese input terminals and some amount of internationalization. Do you think making internationalized software will not happen, once the engines are in place? And the engines are appearing, slowly but surely.
GIMP very extensible. Deprive the Chinese of something they need, and you can bet someone will come to extend GIMP to Photoshop standards. And once these extensions go into GIMP, what would Adobe be?
Adobe is not thinking of the long term. Many businesses are totally incapable of that.
BMWs do not cost nothing to make. Software, once you've recouperated the initial outlay in development cost, is almost PURE profit. There's the difference. You can afford to make less profit, as long as you have realistic expectations.
And this argument that the Chinese version of Adobe's products can only be sold in China is a crock of shit. In the future, China will be powerful and big, and more Americans and Europeans will learn Chinese. There's your future market for you.
Becuase the price of software is very flexible. Given the fact that Adobe's US market has probably paid for their investments and sunken costs into software development, it would not be hard to sell their software for real cheap in China, and still make lots of money. After all, the market is not saturated yet, with your costs of duplication being neglible. An entrenched company like Adobe has the werewithal to grab and gain marketshare, with the pirates' assistance. All they need to do is to lower their profit expectation.
You can see book distributors doing this, when the booksellers have gotten smart. Textbooks cost a lot in the US, but are cheap in Asia. Why? Becuase distributors lower the price significantly to let the poorer nations pay for what they want, at a reasonable price. Often the binding is cheaper and more "mass produced". Sure they make less profit, but at least everyone is happy.
Remember boy, you can't ride a wave a when the surf is down, but you can at least keep aflost!
You don't like political BS, but are so turned off by it that affects your decision to make technical comparisons of merit between various distributions. That you have to make a new distro and waste your own time.
This is just pure plain muddle-headed thinking. What you call "greed" that drives people to get up in the morning, other people call "responsibility", "zest for life" and "drive".
I like the way you think. But you've seriously misinterpreted what the previous poster said. A truly smart person would know that blowing things up is not a way to achieve one's political goals. Whatever the goals of al-Queda are, if they do not understand this, they will do great harm to their own cause, however worthy it may be.
Good! Finally someone who can argue intelligently on slashdot. The only problem is, I don't agree with you.
Everything that can be said about this case is after the fact. You claim that because al Queda used only the 40 bit encryption available, this indicates that people will only use what is available. Sorry, that just does not generalise. IT IS TRUE that some people will just use what is available. IT IS ALSO TRUE that some people will use better alternatives that they can find freely.
If anything, this is a case in which it will convince hardcore criminals to look for better alternatives.
So, which you are logically correct that perhaps export restrictions will stop some people, the context in which you are drawing this conclusion is not set in stone. Keep thinking.
It is a matter of degree. In an elevator, the inertial force is UNIFORM. In the vicinity of a black hole, the central mass of the black hole is so large, that at the length of your height, there is a huge difference in gravity between your head and your feet. If you were a roach, then perhaps, you will not feel the difference. But there is a blackhole large enough that even a roach may feel the difference.
You are right, but you forget one thing. The specialists are the one using the word consistently, if differently from everyone else. It is the nonspecialists who sometimes use it to mean mass, and sometimes use it to mean the vector. It's pretty obvious which party is confused, and which party isn't.
There you have it. It's a legal right granted, as opposed to a natural one, like say, human rights. In other words, it is granted, on the condition that the fruits of copyrights benefit society. As opposed to the unconditional one, where withdrawing that right would constitute a crime.
Point 5 needs to be emphasized for the idiots who really don't get it. The proportion of money that gets spent on space exploration, compared to the federal budget spent on other things, that it makes every one of their objections sound like self-interested assholes.
Silly slashdotter. These are exactly the garbage that you can ignore once you have a decent search engine! Precisely becuase you can skip over them, that you can get to the things you want to look for!
Most slashdotters will come to the conclusion that if they caught someone, the chance of actually catching a liar (not a terrorist - just someone with a reason to lie) is still vanishing small. This is true, assuming that the number of liars is small.
But there is another more interesting possibility to consider - if you want to catch a liar in this circumstances, there would be a better chance of catching a liar if you look for those that pass the lie-detector's test.
It's one thing to say that there are variations within a kind, but there are substantive issues with suggesting that the same process can explain the existance of the great diversity of species.
Sorry, but you are basically repeating the same old argument from incredulity again. On what BASIS do you think you are coming out with this objection?
Is this objection that variation within a species cannot ever produce a variation that makes news species. That's the factual problem right? So if one exception were ever to be raised, your "rule" or "law" would deserve to be revised, right? There is plenty of evidence out there that species change from one to the other. Many very direct! Many observed in the wild! (Try reading "The Beak of the Finch")
Now what are you really objecting to? That there is a difference between a fact and a theory? That evolution is a theory, and so cannot be as good as a fact? BUT EVOLUTION is both FACT AND THEORY. There is a theory of evolution supported by facts of evolution. And this theory of evolution proposes new research directions, and lends coherncy to these facts of evolution. That is what a scientific theory is!
Perhaps you think evolution has aspects that are speculative. But so what? There are speculative aspects to all theories. Do you object to Quantum Mechanics implying that there are many worlds? Do you object to GR predicting that time-travel is possible? Do you think you can "pick-and-choose" which part to believe and which part not to, arbitrarily and on whim, using your own gut level intuition as a guide? When the findings of science has shown consistently that our gut level intuitions are wrong in many points, subtle or otherwise?
To rephrase: go ahead and object to the speculative parts of evolution. But please come out with a scientific argument for that objection. The onus is on the contratrian to supply the arguments, since the (overwhelming) weight of the evidence points to evolution.
Extension of that pattern to explain origin of species is not scientific in nature. It is merely conjecture.
This is wrong on the factual level as well as on the philsophical level.
On the factual level, we have observed speciation in the wild and in the laboratory. For example, the ring species of birds, where one species breeds with another as you move east, until they wrap back on each other. Change of species features has been observed!
On the philosophical level, you can't do science without speculation! That's the only way to advance. Caring only to make "correct" statements, one will never invent and devise experiments to test if one is wrong. And not experiments means no progress. By being wrong (experimentally), scietists cause progress and advancement. These errors are beneficient, think about that!
I hear this argument all the time. But where is the argument that says that Open Source is only good for software foundations? That's an assertion based on anecdotal data, nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding Pantone, that is a problem sure. But localizing GIMP and extending it, I have no doubt is something that will happen. Debian unstable already contains Chinese input terminals and some amount of internationalization. Do you think making internationalized software will not happen, once the engines are in place? And the engines are appearing, slowly but surely.
What threat is there when you WITHDRAW from a market. You sophomoric Randists make me laugh with misperceived reality.
Adobe is not thinking of the long term. Many businesses are totally incapable of that.
And this argument that the Chinese version of Adobe's products can only be sold in China is a crock of shit. In the future, China will be powerful and big, and more Americans and Europeans will learn Chinese. There's your future market for you.
Why do businesses has so little vision?
You can see book distributors doing this, when the booksellers have gotten smart. Textbooks cost a lot in the US, but are cheap in Asia. Why? Becuase distributors lower the price significantly to let the poorer nations pay for what they want, at a reasonable price. Often the binding is cheaper and more "mass produced". Sure they make less profit, but at least everyone is happy.
Remember boy, you can't ride a wave a when the surf is down, but you can at least keep aflost!
You don't like political BS, but are so turned off by it that affects your decision to make technical comparisons of merit between various distributions. That you have to make a new distro and waste your own time.
This is just pure plain muddle-headed thinking. What you call "greed" that drives people to get up in the morning, other people call "responsibility", "zest for life" and "drive".
I like the way you think. But you've seriously misinterpreted what the previous poster said. A truly smart person would know that blowing things up is not a way to achieve one's political goals. Whatever the goals of al-Queda are, if they do not understand this, they will do great harm to their own cause, however worthy it may be.
Everything that can be said about this case is after the fact. You claim that because al Queda used only the 40 bit encryption available, this indicates that people will only use what is available. Sorry, that just does not generalise. IT IS TRUE that some people will just use what is available. IT IS ALSO TRUE that some people will use better alternatives that they can find freely.
If anything, this is a case in which it will convince hardcore criminals to look for better alternatives.
So, which you are logically correct that perhaps export restrictions will stop some people, the context in which you are drawing this conclusion is not set in stone. Keep thinking.
It is a matter of degree. In an elevator, the inertial force is UNIFORM. In the vicinity of a black hole, the central mass of the black hole is so large, that at the length of your height, there is a huge difference in gravity between your head and your feet. If you were a roach, then perhaps, you will not feel the difference. But there is a blackhole large enough that even a roach may feel the difference.
You are right, but you forget one thing. The specialists are the one using the word consistently, if differently from everyone else. It is the nonspecialists who sometimes use it to mean mass, and sometimes use it to mean the vector. It's pretty obvious which party is confused, and which party isn't.
There you have it. It's a legal right granted, as opposed to a natural one, like say, human rights. In other words, it is granted, on the condition that the fruits of copyrights benefit society. As opposed to the unconditional one, where withdrawing that right would constitute a crime.
Will you enter the bathroom labelled "female"? After all, female has got m-a-lee, must be the same!
Point 5 needs to be emphasized for the idiots who really don't get it. The proportion of money that gets spent on space exploration, compared to the federal budget spent on other things, that it makes every one of their objections sound like self-interested assholes.
He's not exhibiting paranoia, he's exhibiting ultrasensitivity. Those are not the same thing.
Sure. Getting yelled at by drunk drive-by hooligans is "interesting human contact".
Someone please remind me of their names.
You can't pan for gold using your bare hands!
But we are nowhere near that limit.
Don't argue with the math. I know it is silly. Thank goodness there are OTHER ways to check for criminals, besides using a polygraph.
But there is another more interesting possibility to consider - if you want to catch a liar in this circumstances, there would be a better chance of catching a liar if you look for those that pass the lie-detector's test.
Just think about that.
Sorry, but you are basically repeating the same old argument from incredulity again. On what BASIS do you think you are coming out with this objection?
Is this objection that variation within a species cannot ever produce a variation that makes news species. That's the factual problem right? So if one exception were ever to be raised, your "rule" or "law" would deserve to be revised, right? There is plenty of evidence out there that species change from one to the other. Many very direct! Many observed in the wild! (Try reading "The Beak of the Finch")
Now what are you really objecting to? That there is a difference between a fact and a theory? That evolution is a theory, and so cannot be as good as a fact? BUT EVOLUTION is both FACT AND THEORY. There is a theory of evolution supported by facts of evolution. And this theory of evolution proposes new research directions, and lends coherncy to these facts of evolution. That is what a scientific theory is!
Perhaps you think evolution has aspects that are speculative. But so what? There are speculative aspects to all theories. Do you object to Quantum Mechanics implying that there are many worlds? Do you object to GR predicting that time-travel is possible? Do you think you can "pick-and-choose" which part to believe and which part not to, arbitrarily and on whim, using your own gut level intuition as a guide? When the findings of science has shown consistently that our gut level intuitions are wrong in many points, subtle or otherwise?
To rephrase: go ahead and object to the speculative parts of evolution. But please come out with a scientific argument for that objection. The onus is on the contratrian to supply the arguments, since the (overwhelming) weight of the evidence points to evolution.
This is wrong on the factual level as well as on the philsophical level.
On the factual level, we have observed speciation in the wild and in the laboratory. For example, the ring species of birds, where one species breeds with another as you move east, until they wrap back on each other. Change of species features has been observed!
On the philosophical level, you can't do science without speculation! That's the only way to advance. Caring only to make "correct" statements, one will never invent and devise experiments to test if one is wrong. And not experiments means no progress. By being wrong (experimentally), scietists cause progress and advancement. These errors are beneficient, think about that!
I hear this argument all the time. But where is the argument that says that Open Source is only good for software foundations? That's an assertion based on anecdotal data, nothing more.
What? And let that distract you from tweaking the kernel to perfection? I think not.