Possibly manslaughter, and several other crimes. I'll agree that she killed the girl, but for it to be murder (morally speaking), you'd really need a clear intent to cause her to commit suicide.
Didn't the evil bitch (while still posing as the girl's online now-ex friend) tell the girl she should just kill herself, when the girl plaintively asked what on earth she could do now that they'd publicly outed her innermost confidences?
What happens if they just ignore their weirdo regulations and continue to publish the maps? How about just not in China?
Or Publish China-Politico Maps as a separate option from Free-Tibet Maps. This reminds me of Arab countries cutting Israel out of inflatable globes donated for education (which of course made the inflatable globe uninflatable), except stupider.
Hopefully google will publish one map inside of China, and a more sensible, complete map for the rest of us.
Oh yeah, and unobscure Cheney's house please. Me and a truck full of toilet paper have a data with the trees in his front yeard. (kidding of course, but I better say it lest those humour-free bozos actually label me a terrorist threat and have me "rendered" to Gitmo).
Rising to the bait, GPL's restrictions act to restrict the current user in order to the benefit the community.
Ahem. Just a little nit to pick: the GPL does not restrict users in any way. It "restricts" (if that's the term) distributors and developers, in that it requires them to make the source code available to anyone they distribute to, upon request. Like a constitution, it enshrines the rights of users, coders, and everyone else by defining their rights and prohibiting actions taken to infringe on those rights.
Microsoft's restrictions benefit, well, Microsoft. That is, the original developer. Not the community, not the current user. Nobody else.
This seems like a pretty important distinction.
You're right, it's an extremely important distinction, not unlike the distinction between your run-of-the-mill business contract and the US Constitution or the British Magna Carta.
a company by the name of thorium power, is designing a real thorium based fuel that would run in a conventional Russian atomic reactor, and along comes this patent troll company trying to eat up the US thorium reactor patents... which will mean Russia and China may be using thorium reactors while America finds itself unable to because 'the patent troll drove the cost too high'
It serves America right. Currently we believe we can grant ourselves a monopoly on most ideas, business models, and software, and then use our economic, diplomatic, and military muscle to force the rest of the world to eventually adopt laws enshrining such patents into their legal systems, and thereby hard code a medium-term economic dominance over everyone else.
What we didn't count on was George W. Bush draining our economy, diluting our military strength, and devistating our diplomatic influence using our nation to prosecute a pernsonal and family vendetta against the Hussein family.
As a result, we are no longer in a position to dictate our agenda to the rest of the world (this is in most ways a good thing for everybody, including the US, even if we don't know it), and lo and behold! The rest of the world has chosen not to enact business method and software patents, and isn't too keen on granting patents for vague ideas the so-called "inventors" have no intention of actually building. So if that means the rest of the world ends up with cheap, clean power, and the US economy flounders or even impldoes, well, our own greed and lust for dominance brought it upon ourselves, and we deserve it.
And maybe, just maybe, our falling behind every other developed nation in just about every field will be the catalyst we need for real patent and copyright reform. I'm not betting on it--we seem to have developed a talent for burying our heads in the sand--but there is an outside hope such change might eventually happen, someday.
They had a good cause, they got what they wanted. Logically, It's time to close up shop; However there in it for the power now.
So to counter-act them, sign up with an opposing PAC. Or form one... perhaps "DAMM" (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).
Obligator "for the record": I am fervently against drunk driving. I'm also against moral grandstanding self-righteous twits who go around passing laws denying the rest of us legal access to our recreations of choice because of a minority of fools who misbehave. Raising the drinking age to 21 in the US made binge drinking worse, not better. Contrast with Germany, France, Italy, etc. where the drinking age is around 16, and binge drinking much less common. Drunk driving statistics didn't improve until they made anti-drunk driving laws more stringent... raising the drinking age had more to do with controlling what under-21s did in their spare time than it ever did reducing drunk driving incidents.
Great, I can only see that as a good thing. I'd rather listen to music whose performers seek greater musical abilities, not shirk them off.
There was plenty of punk made outside of the recording industry's purvue. Some of the best stuff never made it to Vinyl, and only made it to CD when home studios became popular. Indeed, much of it would have probably vanished had it not been shared outside of the boundries the music industry would impose on us. Some of it with the Artists' blessing, some of it without.
Kiss goodbye to pretty much anything that criticises the war on terror or inequality.
Yeah, cuz no one will criticise the government, its foreigh policy, or the politicians that populate it unless they're paid cold, hard cash.
Not.
As an author I support author's rights, and that includes artists and musicians who make the films, musc, paintings, etc. we all enjoy. However, government monopoly entitlements are, in the best of circumstances, a highly ineffecient and imperfect way to implement artistic rights. They empower the middlemen, publishers and industry cartels, while simultaneously disempowering artists and their audiences. To characterise anyone who criticises the current monoply regime as theives, or imply they believe artists shouldn't get paid, is rediculous and intellectually dishonest. To attack those who decry the heavy handed and flagrantly unjust methods employed by those cartels against the innocent and minorly guilty ($250,000 for pirating a dozen $1 songs? Please) goes well beyond intellectual dishonesty.
Sooooo...by the above, would it be incorrect to state that a person's fingerprints or DNA (except in the case of identical sibling(s), and even that is subject to debate on the DNA) are unique?
No, because while the consensus is that unique can mean "very unusual", it is the 5th of 5 definitions, the other four of which still retain the original meaning of unique as "one of a kind". Both definitions are valid, and the language is enriched (in the opinion of some) or muddied (in the opinion of others). Either way, you're free to use both meanings, and thus it remains correct to state that a person's fingerprints or DNA are unique (and the phrase remains correct, though misleading, for identical siblings, since you can apply the 5th definition:-))
Aw poor poor. Heart broken? You gotta admit, that is one fucking stupid idea of Obama's.
It's not the only bad idea he has. Unfortunately, Obama supporters have already modded you to zero for stating the readily-apparent truth, and no doubt this too will be modded down as well. It's a similar phenomenon to how they've taken over digg and spammed the forum with pro-Obama and anti-Clinton media for the past several months.
The bottom line is that NASA and human spaceflight are going to suffer because (a) the most competent leader running for office is being systematically drummed out of the running by the "old boy" leadership of her own party, and (b) without extremely clever leadership to get us out of the hole Baby Bush has dug for us (and it may not be possible at all given how deep into the Abyss we already are), the United States simply cannot afford space travel any longer. We have squandered our wealth as a nation acting as a proxy for the Bush-Hussein pissing match. It's debatable whether anyone could save the space program from the Bush deficit, but I do agree that a leader that will take money from an already underfunded space program that spins off countless technical and ecomonic benefits, and may well be the key to our countries economic future (not to mention, as Stephen Hawking and others have repeatedly argued, the future of the human race) in order to finance pre-kindergarden education is pretty damn incompetent. It bodes ill for what other kinds of decisions a President Obama is likely to make.
We're already third world in terms of our (lack of) basic national healthcare, we aren't doing too well on any of the technology fronts (Asia, Europe, and Canada have better and cheaper broadband, most technical innovations are coming out of the far east, and the US government has systematically underfunded and defunded some of the most promising areas of scientific research--stem cell research and genetic science being just the tip of the iceberg).
It shouldn't be news that Obama wants to gut the space program to increase handouts to the poor. He's made no secret of his stance on that. Bad public policy? Yes. Short sighted? Yes. Surprising? Not at all.
Half right. You forgot the part that goes on the end: "...without due process of law". Various rights are abridged to many varying degrees through due process. The rights to Life, Liberty, and Property are still subject to Execution, Imprisonment, and Fines so long as there is due process of law. There are whole chunks of the constitution about due process. Read 'em some time!
Read the constitution some time. It does not say you can be denied your freedom of speech "through due process". In point of fact, it prohibits the government from passing any law denying you said rights, period.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Note that it doesn't say "abridging the freedom of speech, except with due process" it says "abridging the freedom of speech" PERIOD.
Your willingness to "reinterpret" the constitution to support Bush et al says a great deal about you and others like you, and your willingness to sell your basic rights down the river for a moment's expediency, but you really ought to take a gander at the constitution. It is quite clear that things like "Free Speech Zones" are unconstitutional. The fact that the republicans have stacked the courts (including the supreme court) and the fact that congress has no backbone doesn't change that fact, it merely means the constitution will not be enforced, and we as Americans will have our rights abused and stripped from us at our leaders' whim, which is exactly what we deserve for having tolerated this nonsense and continuing to do so through, in no small part through doublespeak like yours.
You can decide any word means anything but the purpose of language is to communicate ideas clearly, and the only reasons for muddying a definition seem to be ignorance, attention-seeking, or malice
Or evolution in the language, in which unique has come to mean "very unusual".
1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript. 2. having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint. 3. limited in occurrence to a given class, situation, or area: a species unique to Australia. 4. limited to a single outcome or result; without alternative possibilities: Certain types of problems have unique solutions. 5. not typical; unusual: She has a very unique smile.
Now granted, it's the 5th definition of 5, but nevertheless, it is a legitimate definition of the word that exceeds the parameters you have laid down, and does allow for (a) a multiplicity of "unique" ("very unusual") items, as well as modifiers such as "very unique", etc.
The language has evolved beyond your notion of what it should be. Get over it.
Actually, the constitution forbids government's from denying people what is considered a right. By the fact that you can admit that some felons will lose their voting privileges, it can't be a right- At least not a right protected by the Constitution of the United State of America.
Actually, the constitution forbids government's from denying people what is considered a right. By the fact that you can admit that some people will lose their speech priveleges (by not adhering to Party Free Speech Zone restrictions, for example), it can't be a right- At least not a right protected by the Constitution of the United State of America.
Just in case you're still blind to your fallacy, let me spell it out a little more precisely:
Local, state, and federal government routinely violate people's rights in unconstitutional ways. It usually takes years of litigation, at great expense, for such wrongs to put right--and often at the end of such litigation, the very government that has been judicially chastised goes on to violate the very same rights in a slightly different manner. Lather, rinse, repeat, and watch the remaining tatters of the constitution swirl down the drain. Welcome to America 21st century style.
Allow me to one-up your one-up. There was some serious personal war going on between Cain and Abel in the election for Best Shepard in the Early Universe.
Well, if we're going to start including fictional characters rather than historical figures, I'll do you one better. The mud slinging between Suaron the Deceiver and Gandolf the Grey was hard to beat...
No, I'm simply rebutting the argument that experience == good.
Experience may not always be good, but inexperience does equal bad, especially for the office of President of the United States. McCain and Clinton are experienced lawmakers, politicians, and statesmen. You may consider one or the other to be good or bad, depending upon your political bias, but both have proven their competence over the years to be reasonably good at pursuing their respective political agendas. Barak on the other hand has little experience, has introduced no significant legislation as senator. His inexperience will be a problem if he is elected, irrespective of how good his advisers are (and his choices so far in that regard have been mixed at best).
So, while experience == good may not always be true, inexperience == bad most is most certainly true the vast majority of the time.
Canada is even bigger, with a much lower population density. Rural Canadians typically pay $20/month for ADSL bandwidth I couldn't buy in downtown Chicago at any price. I could get equivalent bandwidth, but not ADSL, and prices were in the multi-$100s/month for leased lines. The US was woefully behind its northern neighbour, and the rest of the developed world, three years ago.
Now that I live in Europe, I'm able to get 24Mbit/2Mbit ADSL for a fraction of what I paid for 1/12th the bandwidth in Chicago (and having spoken to a friend of mine who lives there now, it seems things haven't improved much in the last 18 months). Seeing as 100Mbit is coming in the next few months, I'd say the US is not only not ahead, it is falling behind at a geometric rate.
Wow, I don't think that's fair at all. Maybe she just likes his message.
With his message substantially the same as Clinton's, and her having been a vocal supporter of Clinton for many years, and with Clinton not having changed her message or stance on anything (except the War in Iraq, as new information about Bush's and Cheney's lies in starting that illegal war have come to light), it seems unlikely that Obama's message vs. Clinton's would cause her to change her stance.
There are any number of reasons for someone to like a particular candidate, or to change their support from one candidate to another, and to make the immediate assumption that it must be because they happen to share a similar skin tone is just illogical.
It isn't illogical when demographic statistics show a clear racial bias among both blacks and whites with regards to which candidate they support, particularly when the same statistics show a much greater bias among blacks for Obama.
It is even less illogical when one considers Oprah's comment, on tape, supporting Obama and telling supporters to "make the dream of a black president come true" (paraphrased).
I'd say it is pretty definitive that similarity in skin tone was a significant factor, and quite possibly the deciding one.
Well as far as attending the church goes, it is reported that Bill Clinton has seen Pastor Wright. Also Oprah Winfrey has attended the church over the years on and off. Does this mean that Bill Clinton and Oprah hate white people too? If everyone believed everything their pastors said then we would all be in a very different world.
Seeing a man one or twice is not the same as having them as your spiritual mentor for 20 years. The Clinton's will almost certainly have had contact with him, as he's a bigwig in the black community (a big portion of their constituency prior to Barak), that doesn't make them privy to his racist outbursts the way someone who has known him and been mentored by him for 20+ years almost certainly is. Equating the two is as disingenuous as dismissing Wright's overt racism with a "Your not black, you wouldn't understand" in one breath, followed by an apologist "Black preachers have been saying appallingly racist things for decades, so you really can't consider it racist" (anyone beside me see the illogic of that?), as Obama's supporters have done.
As for Oprah, she chucked more than a decade of support for Hilary Clinton out the window to support a freshman senator who is on tape himself saying he wouldn't run in 2008 because he wasn't qualified for the job. Obama is nowhere near as strong on women's issues as Hilary, he's no stronger on core Democratic issues than Hilary (with the possible exception of the Iraq war, at a time when Hilary, along with the rest of us, was deceived into believing Saddam was on the brink of having nuclear weapons), and certainly as a one term senator has less of a track record on all these issues. Since gender issues can be ruled out as a reason for Oprah to dump Hilary for Barak, and core Democratic issues can be ruled out, as well as his track record versus hers, it suggests her change of heart has more to do with ethnicity than anything else...which bears a disturbing parallel to Pastor Wright's rhetoric.
I voted for Obama for senate, but I'm very disturbed at how he's run his campaign, and the willingness of the Democrats to shunt aside a woman with decades of experience and qualifications in favour of a first-term senator who speaks well but will be even more of a newbie in office than Baby Bush was.
The whole situation is ugly. We have 3 choices: a competent, experienced woman, an inexperienced man who says the right things but whose competence is open to question, and a conservative who is likely to continue many of Bush's worst policies even if his rhetoric is softer and slightly more intelligent. And all three have run campaigns that have strayed well outside of the bounds of acceptability IMHO.
That said, the one candidate who might have gotten America out of the morass is unlikely to win the nomination, which leaves us with the question: will Obama through inexperience do less or more damage than McCain's right wing politics? Throw in Obama's apparent long-term acceptance of racist rhetoric and it really makes you wonder what the country is in for under an Obama presidency. I don't know the answer, but I suspect, like others, I will be voting Green or Libertarian this next election as I find both likely winners to be more or less equally lousy. Unless by some miracle Hilary does take the nomination, and I really don't see that happening, irrespective of how desperately the country needs her quality of leadership.
All in all, it's times like these that make me damn glad I emigrated.
better get rid of rice, and just about every other staple in our diet. All are the result of selective breeding (i.e. GM) over hundreds of years. Oh, and shoot the dog.
2.) carrying out experiments on humans
Every psychology experiment, every modern medicine, you name it,you're going to hell!
3.) polluting the environment
We're all doomed. Doomed! Guess we'd better all go live in a shack like the unabomber.
4) causing social injustice
Like say, stripping women of their right to choose whether or not to carry a child inside their body? Whose idea of social injustice shall we use. Karl Marx's? George W. Bush's? The "Pedophile Two-step Shuffle" Pope's?
5.) causing poverty
How exactly? By tithing the faithful, or encouraging couples to have too many children, or denying women access to birth control and abortion? By mismanaging national monetary policy, devaluing the currency, inciting a housing bubble, followed by a housing collapse and mortgage crisis?
6.) becoming obscenely wealthy
Like say... I dunno... the Pope? Oh yeah, he gets to fake out God by telling him he's personally living a vow of poverty...it's the church that puts him up in his fine palatial rooms, with his fancy clothes, fancy hat, wine, meals, pope-mobile, personal jet, etc etc. For that matter, what is "obscenely wealthy" and who gets to decide? To be safe, guess we'd all better opt for poverty, and head-butt the economy even further.
7.) taking drugs
Better put those aspirin away! Anyone with health problems, tough shit. Die! And you mentally ill folks on your anti-psychotics, put down the pill bottle, get out there and go on a killing spree! After all, murder isn't one of the Deadly sins, but by God, taking your medication is!
Presumably they are running afoul of New Deadly Sin's numbers
(Anyone who still believes in religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, after the Vatican puts out this kind of silliness needs their head examined).
No one seriously believes the thought-crime of violating a patent in Germany is even remotely equivalent to the horrors of Nazi Germany. This tongue-in-cheek joke (which others beside yourself did find funny, hence the moderation) was exactly that, tongue-in-cheek. As to whether or not the notion of thought-crimes will ultimately lead us to darker places, that is a subject well worth exploring and debating, and comparing current and theoretical trends with historical examples such as the abuses of 20th century Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism is a valid and important part of any such process, regardless of the knee-jerk "outrage" they will inevitably evoke. The alternative is to not apply the lessons of history to current events and concerns...which is a surefire recipe for reliving those events all over again.
That having been said, I seriously doubt crimilising patents will lead to another holocaust. In fact, I would argue rather strenuously the opposite, and point to other, much more daunting concerns, such as the rise of religiosity, and the banding together of the most fanatical and historically abusive religions in an alliance against modern, enlightened secularism. Of course, that argument is likely to get shouted down much the same way, and thus the lessons of history are well and truly buried.
In fact, I would argue the opposite of what the joke implied. Rigid patent enforcement across the board, particularly in places foolish enough to criminalise patent violations, will force us to address the stifling effects of patents on innovation, technology, and the resultant economic effects. The result, quite likely, would be a repeal of patents and a replacement of such government monopoly entitlements with something more sensible and economically feasible.
Or it could lead to the kind of technological and economic stagnation I describe in my novel...who knows?
No, but Linux==GPL. Sun could release ZFS under a Linux-compatible license without affecting anything else (they could triple-license it).
The only reason Sun isn't releasing ZFS under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license is to prevent Linux from using it. And that tells you that Sun is lying when they are saying that they are supporting Linux; they are trying to hurt Linux and replace it with their shit.
While I think you have a point, and I share (to a degree) your suspicion with regards to Sun's motivations, I would point out that Linus brought this upon himself in no small part as a result of "not trusting" the Free Software Foundation (or Richard Stallman personally, I suppose), and not licensing the Linux kernel under the GPL V2 "or any later version." As a direct result of this, it is impossible for Sun to release their product under a Linux kernel compatible license that also protects them from Software patent claims, as the GPL V3 and Sun's own open source licenses do.
I have been a Linux advocate since the mid nineteen-nineties, and remain so today, but Linus' stubbornness on the licensing issue may well have condemned Linux to the annals of history sooner than it otherwise might have been. Sun may be trying the accelerate this, but in point of fact, I supsect it will be Linux's incompatibility with GPL V3, V4, V5... that will push it away from the center of the Free Software and Open Source world in the coming decades, far more than any political maneuverings by Sun, Microsoft, SCO, or anyone else.
Why does this matter, when we're talking timeframes greater than any software's life cycle? Because free software, unlike proprietary products, tends to change, morph, fork, and become incorporated into new products. Emacs has reinvented itself numerous times. So too has the Linux kernel and a dozen other free software projects. But now, as the legal copyright/patent landscape changes and much of the world is forced to move to protective licenses such as GPL V3 as a matter of self-preservation, Linux will be left out. More and more code will be license-incompatible with the kernel, which over time may well become an insurmountable problem. There is no reason that fragments of Linux code wouldn't have been included in an operating system in 2050... perhaps one calling itself Linux... except that it will be license incompatible, and the GPL V2 so hopelessly outdated with current law and legal precedents as to be nearly useless.
It is this kind of entropy that the Free Software Foundation's recommendation of "GPL V or any later version" was designed to address. Unfortunately, Linux doesn't have that option, so instead (most ironically) it will likely be a bit of FreeBSD, or perhaps GNU Hurd code, that we see floating around in the codebase of whatever free OS we're running forty-odd years from now, and much of that will be down to licensing as much as technical merit.
I'm sorry, but that is total crap. I have been using Gentoo on production servers which I *do* keep current using stable (not bleeding-edge) packages. This is a large shop with many servers. I have never looked back since switching to Gentoo. Everyone who moans about emerges failing and having to run revdep-rebuild often must be doing something wrong. I've had to run revdep-rebuild once when I upgraded libexpat. So what? It took like 2 minutes.
Absolutely right. We deployed Gentoo at my former employer (a Chicago Hedge Fund trading in most major markets) as servers, trading desktops, and developer machines, and it proved to be ideal. Most people don't seem to realize that Gentoo is a meta distribution, allowing finely grained control over exactly what is included (down to the version and compile-time options). Manage your local portage tree, mirrors, and define your site-wide default USE flags, and you have a tweaked platform that is exactly right to your needs. Taking the time to do this has loads of benefits--and ultimately takes less time than trying to shoehorn Fedora or Centos into doing a job it isn't optimized for (and sometimes doesn't support at all).
Anyone unable to make Gentoo work in an enterprise environment doesn't know Gentoo. Now, it isn't for everyone (my current employer uses CentOS, which is fine for them, but wouldn't have worked for my former employer at all), but Gentoo is far more useful in far wider circumstances than its nay-sayers would have us believe.
OpenManager (the all-seeing, all-encompassing web-based management tool) does not work on 64 bit OS's because it is compiled for 32 bit, and needs 32 bit libraries. The RPM dependencies are not properly set, which they claim they're "working on", but they can't even be bothered to provide a list of the packages we need to install
Openmanager works fine on CentOS 4.x (x86_64) and Fedora7 (x86_64). We use it where I work with no problems at all.
(You are perhaps not aware that 64-bit Linux has no trouble running 32-bit apps, as long as you install 32-bit libraries in parallel with 64-bit ones?)
Redhat AS / Centos 5.1 are not supported. Various drivers either don't load, or segfault after spewing error messages on the console.
I have not had this problem on any of the Optiplex or Poweredge boxes I've run CentOS 5.x on
Your other criticisms I agree with for the most part. I could not have said it better with regard to Java, and am not a fan of the PERC controllers either.
THAT's the massive misinformation campaign ? If it is, it's the lamest effort at propaganda ever!
I beg to differ. The most effective propaganda campaigns are those that use some subtlety. Had these people/this person not been caught out, they would have succeeded in quietly shifting the language from a stance neutral or critical of their actions and government's policies, to one favourable. Now multiply this effect 10,000 times, and you get an idea of what is happening...default headlines resembling Fox News on more topics than they do the BBC, die Welt, or Le Monde (all of whom have their biases, but none anywhere close to as extreme as the Republican Ministry of Propaganda that is Fox News).
In many ways, this activity is far more insidious, and far more dangerous, than more obvious attempts at silencing the opposition, such as those Putin, Nixon, and Bush Jr. are using in other venues.
Slashdot Mirror
Possibly manslaughter, and several other crimes. I'll agree that she killed the girl, but for it to be murder (morally speaking), you'd really need a clear intent to cause her to commit suicide.
Didn't the evil bitch (while still posing as the girl's online now-ex friend) tell the girl she should just kill herself, when the girl plaintively asked what on earth she could do now that they'd publicly outed her innermost confidences?
If so, I'd say that qualifies as intent.
What happens if they just ignore their weirdo regulations and continue to publish the maps? How about just not in China?
Or Publish China-Politico Maps as a separate option from Free-Tibet Maps. This reminds me of Arab countries cutting Israel out of inflatable globes donated for education (which of course made the inflatable globe uninflatable), except stupider.
Hopefully google will publish one map inside of China, and a more sensible, complete map for the rest of us.
Oh yeah, and unobscure Cheney's house please. Me and a truck full of toilet paper have a data with the trees in his front yeard. (kidding of course, but I better say it lest those humour-free bozos actually label me a terrorist threat and have me "rendered" to Gitmo).
Rising to the bait, GPL's restrictions act to restrict the current user in order to the benefit the community.
Ahem. Just a little nit to pick: the GPL does not restrict users in any way. It "restricts" (if that's the term) distributors and developers, in that it requires them to make the source code available to anyone they distribute to, upon request. Like a constitution, it enshrines the rights of users, coders, and everyone else by defining their rights and prohibiting actions taken to infringe on those rights.
Microsoft's restrictions benefit, well, Microsoft. That is, the original developer. Not the community, not the current user. Nobody else.
This seems like a pretty important distinction.
You're right, it's an extremely important distinction, not unlike the distinction between your run-of-the-mill business contract and the US Constitution or the British Magna Carta.
a company by the name of thorium power, is designing a real thorium based fuel that would run in a conventional Russian atomic reactor, and along comes this patent troll company trying to eat up the US thorium reactor patents... which will mean Russia and China may be using thorium reactors while America finds itself unable to because 'the patent troll drove the cost too high'
It serves America right. Currently we believe we can grant ourselves a monopoly on most ideas, business models, and software, and then use our economic, diplomatic, and military muscle to force the rest of the world to eventually adopt laws enshrining such patents into their legal systems, and thereby hard code a medium-term economic dominance over everyone else.
What we didn't count on was George W. Bush draining our economy, diluting our military strength, and devistating our diplomatic influence using our nation to prosecute a pernsonal and family vendetta against the Hussein family.
As a result, we are no longer in a position to dictate our agenda to the rest of the world (this is in most ways a good thing for everybody, including the US, even if we don't know it), and lo and behold! The rest of the world has chosen not to enact business method and software patents, and isn't too keen on granting patents for vague ideas the so-called "inventors" have no intention of actually building. So if that means the rest of the world ends up with cheap, clean power, and the US economy flounders or even impldoes, well, our own greed and lust for dominance brought it upon ourselves, and we deserve it.
And maybe, just maybe, our falling behind every other developed nation in just about every field will be the catalyst we need for real patent and copyright reform. I'm not betting on it--we seem to have developed a talent for burying our heads in the sand--but there is an outside hope such change might eventually happen, someday.
Neither. They're sung.
They had a good cause, they got what they wanted. Logically, It's time to close up shop; However there in it for the power now.
... perhaps "DAMM" (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).
... raising the drinking age had more to do with controlling what under-21s did in their spare time than it ever did reducing drunk driving incidents.
So to counter-act them, sign up with an opposing PAC. Or form one
Obligator "for the record": I am fervently against drunk driving. I'm also against moral grandstanding self-righteous twits who go around passing laws denying the rest of us legal access to our recreations of choice because of a minority of fools who misbehave. Raising the drinking age to 21 in the US made binge drinking worse, not better. Contrast with Germany, France, Italy, etc. where the drinking age is around 16, and binge drinking much less common. Drunk driving statistics didn't improve until they made anti-drunk driving laws more stringent
Great, I can only see that as a good thing. I'd rather listen to music whose performers seek greater musical abilities, not shirk them off.
There was plenty of punk made outside of the recording industry's purvue. Some of the best stuff never made it to Vinyl, and only made it to CD when home studios became popular. Indeed, much of it would have probably vanished had it not been shared outside of the boundries the music industry would impose on us. Some of it with the Artists' blessing, some of it without.
Yeah, cuz no one will criticise the government, its foreigh policy, or the politicians that populate it unless they're paid cold, hard cash.
Not.
As an author I support author's rights, and that includes artists and musicians who make the films, musc, paintings, etc. we all enjoy. However, government monopoly entitlements are, in the best of circumstances, a highly ineffecient and imperfect way to implement artistic rights. They empower the middlemen, publishers and industry cartels, while simultaneously disempowering artists and their audiences. To characterise anyone who criticises the current monoply regime as theives, or imply they believe artists shouldn't get paid, is rediculous and intellectually dishonest. To attack those who decry the heavy handed and flagrantly unjust methods employed by those cartels against the innocent and minorly guilty ($250,000 for pirating a dozen $1 songs? Please) goes well beyond intellectual dishonesty.
Sooooo...by the above, would it be incorrect to state that a person's fingerprints or DNA (except in the case of identical sibling(s), and even that is subject to debate on the DNA) are unique?
:-))
No, because while the consensus is that unique can mean "very unusual", it is the 5th of 5 definitions, the other four of which still retain the original meaning of unique as "one of a kind". Both definitions are valid, and the language is enriched (in the opinion of some) or muddied (in the opinion of others). Either way, you're free to use both meanings, and thus it remains correct to state that a person's fingerprints or DNA are unique (and the phrase remains correct, though misleading, for identical siblings, since you can apply the 5th definition
Aw poor poor. Heart broken? You gotta admit, that is one fucking stupid idea of Obama's.
It's not the only bad idea he has. Unfortunately, Obama supporters have already modded you to zero for stating the readily-apparent truth, and no doubt this too will be modded down as well. It's a similar phenomenon to how they've taken over digg and spammed the forum with pro-Obama and anti-Clinton media for the past several months.
The bottom line is that NASA and human spaceflight are going to suffer because (a) the most competent leader running for office is being systematically drummed out of the running by the "old boy" leadership of her own party, and (b) without extremely clever leadership to get us out of the hole Baby Bush has dug for us (and it may not be possible at all given how deep into the Abyss we already are), the United States simply cannot afford space travel any longer. We have squandered our wealth as a nation acting as a proxy for the Bush-Hussein pissing match. It's debatable whether anyone could save the space program from the Bush deficit, but I do agree that a leader that will take money from an already underfunded space program that spins off countless technical and ecomonic benefits, and may well be the key to our countries economic future (not to mention, as Stephen Hawking and others have repeatedly argued, the future of the human race) in order to finance pre-kindergarden education is pretty damn incompetent. It bodes ill for what other kinds of decisions a President Obama is likely to make.
We're already third world in terms of our (lack of) basic national healthcare, we aren't doing too well on any of the technology fronts (Asia, Europe, and Canada have better and cheaper broadband, most technical innovations are coming out of the far east, and the US government has systematically underfunded and defunded some of the most promising areas of scientific research--stem cell research and genetic science being just the tip of the iceberg).
It shouldn't be news that Obama wants to gut the space program to increase handouts to the poor. He's made no secret of his stance on that. Bad public policy? Yes. Short sighted? Yes. Surprising? Not at all.
Half right. You forgot the part that goes on the end: "...without due process of law". Various rights are abridged to many varying degrees through due process. The rights to Life, Liberty, and Property are still subject to Execution, Imprisonment, and Fines so long as there is due process of law. There are whole chunks of the constitution about due process. Read 'em some time!
Read the constitution some time. It does not say you can be denied your freedom of speech "through due process". In point of fact, it prohibits the government from passing any law denying you said rights, period.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Note that it doesn't say "abridging the freedom of speech, except with due process" it says "abridging the freedom of speech" PERIOD.
Your willingness to "reinterpret" the constitution to support Bush et al says a great deal about you and others like you, and your willingness to sell your basic rights down the river for a moment's expediency, but you really ought to take a gander at the constitution. It is quite clear that things like "Free Speech Zones" are unconstitutional. The fact that the republicans have stacked the courts (including the supreme court) and the fact that congress has no backbone doesn't change that fact, it merely means the constitution will not be enforced, and we as Americans will have our rights abused and stripped from us at our leaders' whim, which is exactly what we deserve for having tolerated this nonsense and continuing to do so through, in no small part through doublespeak like yours.
You can decide any word means anything but the purpose of language is to communicate ideas clearly, and the only reasons for muddying a definition seem to be ignorance, attention-seeking, or malice
Or evolution in the language, in which unique has come to mean "very unusual".
1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript.
2. having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint.
3. limited in occurrence to a given class, situation, or area: a species unique to Australia.
4. limited to a single outcome or result; without alternative possibilities: Certain types of problems have unique solutions.
5. not typical; unusual: She has a very unique smile.
Now granted, it's the 5th definition of 5, but nevertheless, it is a legitimate definition of the word that exceeds the parameters you have laid down, and does allow for (a) a multiplicity of "unique" ("very unusual") items, as well as modifiers such as "very unique", etc.
The language has evolved beyond your notion of what it should be. Get over it.
Actually, the constitution forbids government's from denying people what is considered a right. By the fact that you can admit that some felons will lose their voting privileges, it can't be a right- At least not a right protected by the Constitution of the United State of America.
Actually, the constitution forbids government's from denying people what is considered a right. By the fact that you can admit that some people will lose their speech priveleges (by not adhering to Party Free Speech Zone restrictions, for example), it can't be a right- At least not a right protected by the Constitution of the United State of America.
Just in case you're still blind to your fallacy, let me spell it out a little more precisely:
Local, state, and federal government routinely violate people's rights in unconstitutional ways. It usually takes years of litigation, at great expense, for such wrongs to put right--and often at the end of such litigation, the very government that has been judicially chastised goes on to violate the very same rights in a slightly different manner. Lather, rinse, repeat, and watch the remaining tatters of the constitution swirl down the drain. Welcome to America 21st century style.
Allow me to one-up your one-up. There was some serious personal war going on between Cain and Abel in the election for Best Shepard in the Early Universe.
Well, if we're going to start including fictional characters rather than historical figures, I'll do you one better. The mud slinging between Suaron the Deceiver and Gandolf the Grey was hard to beat...
No, I'm simply rebutting the argument that experience == good.
Experience may not always be good, but inexperience does equal bad, especially for the office of President of the United States. McCain and Clinton are experienced lawmakers, politicians, and statesmen. You may consider one or the other to be good or bad, depending upon your political bias, but both have proven their competence over the years to be reasonably good at pursuing their respective political agendas. Barak on the other hand has little experience, has introduced no significant legislation as senator. His inexperience will be a problem if he is elected, irrespective of how good his advisers are (and his choices so far in that regard have been mixed at best).
So, while experience == good may not always be true, inexperience == bad most is most certainly true the vast majority of the time.
The article makes it clear that no one knows how China will play its burgeoning antitrust influence -- conciliatory or nationalistic.
Nationalistic. Next question?
Canada is even bigger, with a much lower population density. Rural Canadians typically pay $20/month for ADSL bandwidth I couldn't buy in downtown Chicago at any price. I could get equivalent bandwidth, but not ADSL, and prices were in the multi-$100s/month for leased lines. The US was woefully behind its northern neighbour, and the rest of the developed world, three years ago.
Now that I live in Europe, I'm able to get 24Mbit/2Mbit ADSL for a fraction of what I paid for 1/12th the bandwidth in Chicago (and having spoken to a friend of mine who lives there now, it seems things haven't improved much in the last 18 months). Seeing as 100Mbit is coming in the next few months, I'd say the US is not only not ahead, it is falling behind at a geometric rate.
Wow, I don't think that's fair at all. Maybe she just likes his message.
With his message substantially the same as Clinton's, and her having been a vocal supporter of Clinton for many years, and with Clinton not having changed her message or stance on anything (except the War in Iraq, as new information about Bush's and Cheney's lies in starting that illegal war have come to light), it seems unlikely that Obama's message vs. Clinton's would cause her to change her stance.
There are any number of reasons for someone to like a particular candidate, or to change their support from one candidate to another, and to make the immediate assumption that it must be because they happen to share a similar skin tone is just illogical.
It isn't illogical when demographic statistics show a clear racial bias among both blacks and whites with regards to which candidate they support, particularly when the same statistics show a much greater bias among blacks for Obama.
It is even less illogical when one considers Oprah's comment, on tape, supporting Obama and telling supporters to "make the dream of a black president come true" (paraphrased).
I'd say it is pretty definitive that similarity in skin tone was a significant factor, and quite possibly the deciding one.
Well as far as attending the church goes, it is reported that Bill Clinton has seen Pastor Wright. Also Oprah Winfrey has attended the church over the years on and off. Does this mean that Bill Clinton and Oprah hate white people too? If everyone believed everything their pastors said then we would all be in a very different world.
Seeing a man one or twice is not the same as having them as your spiritual mentor for 20 years. The Clinton's will almost certainly have had contact with him, as he's a bigwig in the black community (a big portion of their constituency prior to Barak), that doesn't make them privy to his racist outbursts the way someone who has known him and been mentored by him for 20+ years almost certainly is. Equating the two is as disingenuous as dismissing Wright's overt racism with a "Your not black, you wouldn't understand" in one breath, followed by an apologist "Black preachers have been saying appallingly racist things for decades, so you really can't consider it racist" (anyone beside me see the illogic of that?), as Obama's supporters have done.
As for Oprah, she chucked more than a decade of support for Hilary Clinton out the window to support a freshman senator who is on tape himself saying he wouldn't run in 2008 because he wasn't qualified for the job. Obama is nowhere near as strong on women's issues as Hilary, he's no stronger on core Democratic issues than Hilary (with the possible exception of the Iraq war, at a time when Hilary, along with the rest of us, was deceived into believing Saddam was on the brink of having nuclear weapons), and certainly as a one term senator has less of a track record on all these issues. Since gender issues can be ruled out as a reason for Oprah to dump Hilary for Barak, and core Democratic issues can be ruled out, as well as his track record versus hers, it suggests her change of heart has more to do with ethnicity than anything else...which bears a disturbing parallel to Pastor Wright's rhetoric.
I voted for Obama for senate, but I'm very disturbed at how he's run his campaign, and the willingness of the Democrats to shunt aside a woman with decades of experience and qualifications in favour of a first-term senator who speaks well but will be even more of a newbie in office than Baby Bush was.
The whole situation is ugly. We have 3 choices: a competent, experienced woman, an inexperienced man who says the right things but whose competence is open to question, and a conservative who is likely to continue many of Bush's worst policies even if his rhetoric is softer and slightly more intelligent. And all three have run campaigns that have strayed well outside of the bounds of acceptability IMHO.
That said, the one candidate who might have gotten America out of the morass is unlikely to win the nomination, which leaves us with the question: will Obama through inexperience do less or more damage than McCain's right wing politics? Throw in Obama's apparent long-term acceptance of racist rhetoric and it really makes you wonder what the country is in for under an Obama presidency. I don't know the answer, but I suspect, like others, I will be voting Green or Libertarian this next election as I find both likely winners to be more or less equally lousy. Unless by some miracle Hilary does take the nomination, and I really don't see that happening, irrespective of how desperately the country needs her quality of leadership.
All in all, it's times like these that make me damn glad I emigrated.
Traditional or revised list?
... I dunno ... the Pope? Oh yeah, he gets to fake out God by telling him he's personally living a vow of poverty...it's the church that puts him up in his fine palatial rooms, with his fancy clothes, fancy hat, wine, meals, pope-mobile, personal jet, etc etc. For that matter, what is "obscenely wealthy" and who gets to decide? To be safe, guess we'd all better opt for poverty, and head-butt the economy even further.
Presumably they are running afoul of New Deadly Sin's numbers 4, 5, 6, and perhaps 7 (see below)
The new deadly sins are:
1.) genetic modification
better get rid of rice, and just about every other staple in our diet. All are the result of selective breeding (i.e. GM) over hundreds of
years. Oh, and shoot the dog.
2.) carrying out experiments on humans
Every psychology experiment, every modern medicine, you name it,you're going to hell!
3.) polluting the environment
We're all doomed. Doomed! Guess we'd better all go live in a shack like the unabomber.
4) causing social injustice
Like say, stripping women of their right to choose whether or not to carry a child inside their body? Whose idea of social injustice shall we use. Karl Marx's? George W. Bush's? The "Pedophile Two-step Shuffle" Pope's?
5.) causing poverty
How exactly? By tithing the faithful, or encouraging couples to have too many children, or denying women access to birth control and abortion? By mismanaging national monetary policy, devaluing the currency, inciting a housing bubble, followed by a housing collapse and mortgage crisis?
6.) becoming obscenely wealthy
Like say
7.) taking drugs
Better put those aspirin away! Anyone with health problems, tough shit. Die! And you mentally ill folks on your anti-psychotics, put down the pill bottle, get out there and go on a killing spree! After all, murder isn't one of the Deadly sins, but by God, taking your medication is!
Presumably they are running afoul of New Deadly Sin's numbers
(Anyone who still believes in religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, after the Vatican puts out this kind of silliness needs their head examined).
Humour. A difficult concept.
No one seriously believes the thought-crime of violating a patent in Germany is even remotely equivalent to the horrors of Nazi Germany. This tongue-in-cheek joke (which others beside yourself did find funny, hence the moderation) was exactly that, tongue-in-cheek. As to whether or not the notion of thought-crimes will ultimately lead us to darker places, that is a subject well worth exploring and debating, and comparing current and theoretical trends with historical examples such as the abuses of 20th century Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism is a valid and important part of any such process, regardless of the knee-jerk "outrage" they will inevitably evoke. The alternative is to not apply the lessons of history to current events and concerns...which is a surefire recipe for reliving those events all over again.
That having been said, I seriously doubt crimilising patents will lead to another holocaust. In fact, I would argue rather strenuously the opposite, and point to other, much more daunting concerns, such as the rise of religiosity, and the banding together of the most fanatical and historically abusive religions in an alliance against modern, enlightened secularism. Of course, that argument is likely to get shouted down much the same way, and thus the lessons of history are well and truly buried.
In fact, I would argue the opposite of what the joke implied. Rigid patent enforcement across the board, particularly in places foolish enough to criminalise patent violations, will force us to address the stifling effects of patents on innovation, technology, and the resultant economic effects. The result, quite likely, would be a repeal of patents and a replacement of such government monopoly entitlements with something more sensible and economically feasible.
Or it could lead to the kind of technological and economic stagnation I describe in my novel...who knows?
No, but Linux==GPL. Sun could release ZFS under a Linux-compatible license without affecting anything else (they could triple-license it).
... perhaps one calling itself Linux ... except that it will be license incompatible, and the GPL V2 so hopelessly outdated with current law and legal precedents as to be nearly useless.
The only reason Sun isn't releasing ZFS under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license is to prevent Linux from using it. And that tells you that Sun is lying when they are saying that they are supporting Linux; they are trying to hurt Linux and replace it with their shit.
While I think you have a point, and I share (to a degree) your suspicion with regards to Sun's motivations, I would point out that Linus brought this upon himself in no small part as a result of "not trusting" the Free Software Foundation (or Richard Stallman personally, I suppose), and not licensing the Linux kernel under the GPL V2 "or any later version." As a direct result of this, it is impossible for Sun to release their product under a Linux kernel compatible license that also protects them from Software patent claims, as the GPL V3 and Sun's own open source licenses do.
I have been a Linux advocate since the mid nineteen-nineties, and remain so today, but Linus' stubbornness on the licensing issue may well have condemned Linux to the annals of history sooner than it otherwise might have been. Sun may be trying the accelerate this, but in point of fact, I supsect it will be Linux's incompatibility with GPL V3, V4, V5... that will push it away from the center of the Free Software and Open Source world in the coming decades, far more than any political maneuverings by Sun, Microsoft, SCO, or anyone else.
Why does this matter, when we're talking timeframes greater than any software's life cycle? Because free software, unlike proprietary products, tends to change, morph, fork, and become incorporated into new products. Emacs has reinvented itself numerous times. So too has the Linux kernel and a dozen other free software projects. But now, as the legal copyright/patent landscape changes and much of the world is forced to move to protective licenses such as GPL V3 as a matter of self-preservation, Linux will be left out. More and more code will be license-incompatible with the kernel, which over time may well become an insurmountable problem. There is no reason that fragments of Linux code wouldn't have been included in an operating system in 2050
It is this kind of entropy that the Free Software Foundation's recommendation of "GPL V or any later version" was designed to address. Unfortunately, Linux doesn't have that option, so instead (most ironically) it will likely be a bit of FreeBSD, or perhaps GNU Hurd code, that we see floating around in the codebase of whatever free OS we're running forty-odd years from now, and much of that will be down to licensing as much as technical merit.
You fail to offer any standing reason why you should trust Google more than Microsoft.
More to the point, no company should be trusted with that kind of personal information. Not Google. Not Microsoft. No one.
I'm sorry, but that is total crap. I have been using Gentoo on production servers which I *do* keep current using stable (not bleeding-edge) packages. This is a large shop with many servers. I have never looked back since switching to Gentoo. Everyone who moans about emerges failing and having to run revdep-rebuild often must be doing something wrong. I've had to run revdep-rebuild once when I upgraded libexpat. So what? It took like 2 minutes.
Absolutely right. We deployed Gentoo at my former employer (a Chicago Hedge Fund trading in most major markets) as servers, trading desktops, and developer machines, and it proved to be ideal. Most people don't seem to realize that Gentoo is a meta distribution, allowing finely grained control over exactly what is included (down to the version and compile-time options). Manage your local portage tree, mirrors, and define your site-wide default USE flags, and you have a tweaked platform that is exactly right to your needs. Taking the time to do this has loads of benefits--and ultimately takes less time than trying to shoehorn Fedora or Centos into doing a job it isn't optimized for (and sometimes doesn't support at all).
Anyone unable to make Gentoo work in an enterprise environment doesn't know Gentoo. Now, it isn't for everyone (my current employer uses CentOS, which is fine for them, but wouldn't have worked for my former employer at all), but Gentoo is far more useful in far wider circumstances than its nay-sayers would have us believe.
OpenManager (the all-seeing, all-encompassing web-based management tool) does not work on 64 bit OS's because it is compiled for 32 bit, and needs 32 bit libraries. The RPM dependencies are not properly set, which they claim they're "working on", but they can't even be bothered to provide a list of the packages we need to install
Openmanager works fine on CentOS 4.x (x86_64) and Fedora7 (x86_64). We use it where I work with no problems at all.
(You are perhaps not aware that 64-bit Linux has no trouble running 32-bit apps, as long as you install 32-bit libraries in parallel with 64-bit ones?)
Redhat AS / Centos 5.1 are not supported. Various drivers either don't load, or segfault after spewing error messages on the console.
I have not had this problem on any of the Optiplex or Poweredge boxes I've run CentOS 5.x on
Your other criticisms I agree with for the most part. I could not have said it better with regard to Java, and am not a fan of the PERC controllers either.
THAT's the massive misinformation campaign ? If it is, it's the lamest effort at propaganda ever!
I beg to differ. The most effective propaganda campaigns are those that use some subtlety. Had these people/this person not been caught out, they would have succeeded in quietly shifting the language from a stance neutral or critical of their actions and government's policies, to one favourable. Now multiply this effect 10,000 times, and you get an idea of what is happening...default headlines resembling Fox News on more topics than they do the BBC, die Welt, or Le Monde (all of whom have their biases, but none anywhere close to as extreme as the Republican Ministry of Propaganda that is Fox News).
In many ways, this activity is far more insidious, and far more dangerous, than more obvious attempts at silencing the opposition, such as those Putin, Nixon, and Bush Jr. are using in other venues.