I'm intrigued by the moderation of your post. The only thing insightful there is your subject.
Translated to another topic, your post might have gone something like: "I don't get it, what's the big deal with Doom 3 being released? If not Doom 3, some other 3d game would come out. Oh yeah, I don't even like games."
The poster asked "shouldn't there be some kind of rule", not, "isn't there some kind of rule."
And your whole retroaction thing doesn't address the question at all.
It's overly clear that at least in some cases a person shouldn't be arrested/prosecuted for laws that existed at the time of violation, but which no longer exist, such as the Jim Crow laws.
I'd be excited about a robotic mission too... if I believed it would work.
The NASA guy (high up in the org) was really keen on the robot. He claimed to have seen "video" that was not (his words) "Power Point engineering".
I'm highly skeptical of the robot idea, and here's why:
NASA can afford to, and is capable of, repairing Hubble with a manned mission right now. The risk to the crew is negligibly greater than a mission to ISS, and NASA plans to send crews to ISS a-plenty.
The risk to Hubble on a manned mission is fairly low. The risk to Hubble by entrusting it to an untested and today uninvented and yet-to-be-engineered robot is very high.
I am *far* from convinced that cost and safety are rational reasons for the attitudes of being extremely against a manned mission to Hubble and being so emphatically enthusiastic on a robotic mission to Hubble. It doesn't add up. There are reasons I'm sure, but they *aren't* the officially stated reasons.
It would be a shame to scrap HST because we didn't want to spend an extra $500 million to save it.
It's even more the shame for all the money saved during the last year+ of non-flight. That $500 million isn't money that's unavailable, but it is money that would go to a purely intellectual goal. The current ruling ideology does not value social/intellectual concerns.
During the proceedings (thanks C-SPAN!), it was quite evident that NASA was not giving a coherent reason for abandoning Hubble. NASA claimed that a mission to Hubble was unacceptably risky, while missions to ISS were not. The board pressed them on just how and why, and the increased risk seemed negligible for such a servicing mission.
However NASA was excited about sending an unmanned robotic mission to service Hubble, and they claimed that there were companies working on proposals to provide that robot.
My take was that this is the result of putting a non-scientist bean-counter (O'Keefe) in charge of NASA, coupled with an administration keen on cutting social funding while simultaneously funding private contractors as though there was no tomorrow.
I'm quite certain you are wrong (about me specifically and assuming all else remains the same). If you just meant 'you' in general, then I agree that it's likely most people wouldn't care.
I tend to care about things that most people just shrug at. You'd have to change *that* about me for me to not care about being RFID tagged.
If this could prevent child-napping, yes I'd put one on my kids.
The odds of being kidnapped (in general, of course if your area has higher stats, then my arguments change) are so low that this sort of thing doesn't do a lot of good. The odds are very high, however, of RFID tags being used for undesirable purposes (unless RFID is well-regulated with regards to privacy, which seems unlikely at this point).
We have:
1. A dubious benefit. 2. A certain detriment.
In complete seriousness, if my parents had tagged me in this way, I'd be very upset with them. I could forgive ignorance on their part (them being fed the line that this is a good thing, and that there are no drawbacks). I could *not* forgive them if they did this with full knowledge (not that I'd disown them or something, just that there would always be this one issue that, regardless of how good our relationship is, I could not forgive).
Now, in Japan the culture is quite different. This doesn't strike me as being too terribly unacceptable there.
Am I missing something, or is there basically no story here?
Nope, you're not missing anything. Maybe you're on the wrong site though. This is "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and this story is a story interesting to nerds (software, source code, freedom), as for the "stuff that matters" part, it does matter to some (enough to be a story).
This story is interesting specifically in the fact that sometimes a company can take source code and build a non-open product and not be evil by doing so. Yes, it has happened before, but this is a contemporary example. It's a twist on an old story, "Company takes community source code and there's outrage (ok, we hear this story now and then, but...)--project author pleased with the use of his code (What? Oh, I see, it was BSD style free.)"
There are enough people who are all "Free as in GPL" who might benefit from hearing the point of view of someone who is all "Free as in BSD". It raises the issue for the reader to consider whether they prefer something that's so free it is free to become unfree, or something that's so free it can never become unfree. Which is more free? How do you choose?
Huh, I bet that could be an interesting story, one which could make one think.
In the original cut the lead widget and widgetess were supposed to spend their lives apart, in exile, each dying thinking the other betrayed them, not realizing they really disowned the other to save the other's life.
But the studio made them change it so they lived together in a cottage in exile after the King's wife told him she'd leave him childless if he sent them apart forever.
Stupid Hollywood.
(sheesh, the Alan Smithee conspiracy seems a bit far-fetched--if the guy in charge of the project didn't like what he was doing enough to go pseudonymous in a keynote, he has to be either really, really stupid, or hoping to be fired (or Steved, by some peoples' lexicon). My guess is that it's just Apple's new version of "John/Jane Doe").
Remind sales force to re-emphasize our commitment to security. Suggest that if they are asked about Firefox to take on the blank stare which indicates you would laugh at the customer's foolishness if you weren't so extraordinarily polite.
If that doesn't work, teach the sales force the monkey-dance.
Also, float new IE motto: I... LOVE... THIS... BROWSER... YEAH!
About the last thing I'd want to see on TV is the Goatse guy. But you know what? If it takes letting the Goatse guy on TV to defeat the fuckwads like the Parents Television Council, then I say BRING IT ON MR GOATSE!
If ya don't like it just glue your dial on FOX or something.
It's not entirely obvious how to distinguish between the two.
I'm sorry. If someone does something they know is wrong and do it on the air... then they should just own up. There are consequences to your actions. If they screw up they can own up.
That giant sucking sound is you completely missing the point. The complaints here on slashdot are from people who don't think that what the FCC says is wrong is actually wrong. Thus another rule which strengthens the one we disagree with is something we don't like.
This rule strengthens an already awful and repugnant rule.
"Doesn't the government have better things to do?"
Not since FDR it doesn't.
You are an uncritical moron. It's overly obvious to anyone who takes even the most miniscule amount of effort to ponder the issue that there *are* better things for the government to be doing. Does your limited capacity for reason cripple your ability to see that a government ought to be for the people?
Now, think carefully (this is an easy one) are there things more important, that the government could focus on instead of seeking to further censor the airwaves?
In any case, the penguin will always be in peril; in a world with software patents there is no true freedom to innovate with software.
It's not so dire as that. Take every home Linux user, every IT Linux admin, every corporation running Linux (including IB-freakin'-M), and every governmental department running Linux.
Now tell them they must immediately cease and desist in the use of Linux.
Ok, so you just go after the distributions (I don't see exactly how (for example, SuSe is in Germany, and what about all the sub-distributions, mirrors, etc), but let's say you do). Now you are telling all of the above people that their computers will not be upgradable for some time (if ever)--and the only alternatives costs thousands of dollars per computer.
Ok, so you just go after one key package or another (such as Samba). Telling the above (again) that their Samba shares (being used as, critical fileservers) must all be switched over to NT costing, again, thousands of dollars.
Look at the current MS/SCO debacle. This is the best MS can really attempt without risking fatally wounding itself, and the attempt is *laughable*. No one really believed the case MS/SCO put forth, they only feared that some people might believe it and, acting on that belief, run screaming from Linux (or pay SCO, thus potentially legitimizing the case). Didn't happen, because those in the know knew just how pathetic the MS/SCO ploy was.
Maybe you mean that Linux will always be under attack. Sure, that's life. MS is always under attack, Apple is always under attack, Java is always under attack, BSD is always.... Every damn thing in the Universe is always under attack. It's the nature of existence. Everything that exists must face the threat of non-existence.
Don't worry though, Linux is very well suited to weather any individual tactical attack, and the community is too keen on the issues to be steamrolled by any long-term strategy. Sometimes the battle will look huge (and that's because it is), but the world will *really* have to suck in a *huge* way before the battles facing Linux can ever become insurmountable (or something more desirable than Linux would have had to come along, which would be Linux losing in a good way, which you aren't talking about, and which Linus himself, I'm sure, would be happy (though perhaps a little miffed personally) to see).
It's plain to see that the article submitter, who is undoubtedly an American, didn't take into account that China is on the other side of the planet and that the "9" in the article, when viewed right-side up is actually a "6", and that the correct story is that China has switched over to IPv6.
I chalk this up as a clear and abject failure of our education system.
Yeah, yeah, someone says it every time. But seriously, if a company like MS did this, the same people who I see here calling this a 'legitimate business tactic' and 'good marketing' would be calling it a shallow, greedy attempt to abuse market power.
No, I'm fairly sure a lot of slashdotters would rejoice if Microsoft were to delay a product until it's truly ready. Throw in the discontinuation of the current product as well and you've got the ingredients for the declaration of a bonafide Open Source holiday.
On a serious note, I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking the specific action is what people object to. Nobody really cares about integrating a browser into the OS (although the way MS did it, technologically, was a big screw-up--but that confuses the issue, there are many instances (WebKit on OS X, Konqeror on KDE) where it's been done right). It's not the action, it's the ultimate effect the action has on the user that people really are fed up with.
Which brings us back to the topic at hand. What is the effect of Apple's announcement? Media buzz? Big deal, who cares. It doesn't quash Dell or IBM by locking them out of a market, it doesn't pull the rug out from under the consumer. In fact, it's the result of a screw up at Apple, and they're afraid of an already slow and, to some, stale product continuing to get ever more slow and stale. They've fessed up, and humbled themselves before the consumer. What they've done is take a bad situation and do the right thing about it.
This is a good thing, and if MS did it, I, for one, would find it refreshing. Sadly, MS rarely does the right thing, so I have to look to Apple (and, for other but somewhat similar reasons, IBM) for a company that I can feel good about dealing with--that the persuit of money doesn't corrupt everything it touches, as it so often seems to do (such as you see with the RIAA, MS, and Sony's ATRAC players).
All my practice at getting first post on slashdot will finally pay off!
Yeah, too bad you were post 59!
Like I said, I'm a shoo-in!
That PowerBook is as good as mine. As soon as Bill Gates sends me the money for forwarding his test e-mail out, I plan to purchase AppleCare for the PowerBook and maybe get an iTrip for the iPod.
OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! I CAN'T HARDLY WAIT!!!1!!!!!111
Hurry people, start buying the next 5 million or so songs so I can get my new PowerBook soon. I've already ordered a developer's copy of Tiger and I want to try out that new Dashboard widget thingy as soon as possible!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm intrigued by the moderation of your post. The only thing insightful there is your subject.
Translated to another topic, your post might have gone something like:
"I don't get it, what's the big deal with Doom 3 being released? If not Doom 3, some other 3d game would come out. Oh yeah, I don't even like games."
Heh...
Especially since 1 in every 3 phones is not significantly different from 28.9%.
In other words, Nokia has gone from accounting for 1 in every 3 phones to accounting for 1 in every 3 phones.
The poster asked "shouldn't there be some kind of rule", not, "isn't there some kind of rule."
And your whole retroaction thing doesn't address the question at all.
It's overly clear that at least in some cases a person shouldn't be arrested/prosecuted for laws that existed at the time of violation, but which no longer exist, such as the Jim Crow laws.
I'd be excited about a robotic mission too ... if I believed it would work.
The NASA guy (high up in the org) was really keen on the robot. He claimed to have seen "video" that was not (his words) "Power Point engineering".
I'm highly skeptical of the robot idea, and here's why:
NASA can afford to, and is capable of, repairing Hubble with a manned mission right now. The risk to the crew is negligibly greater than a mission to ISS, and NASA plans to send crews to ISS a-plenty.
The risk to Hubble on a manned mission is fairly low. The risk to Hubble by entrusting it to an untested and today uninvented and yet-to-be-engineered robot is very high.
I am *far* from convinced that cost and safety are rational reasons for the attitudes of being extremely against a manned mission to Hubble and being so emphatically enthusiastic on a robotic mission to Hubble. It doesn't add up. There are reasons I'm sure, but they *aren't* the officially stated reasons.
It would be a shame to scrap HST because we didn't want to spend an extra $500 million to save it.
It's even more the shame for all the money saved during the last year+ of non-flight. That $500 million isn't money that's unavailable, but it is money that would go to a purely intellectual goal. The current ruling ideology does not value social/intellectual concerns.
During the proceedings (thanks C-SPAN!), it was quite evident that NASA was not giving a coherent reason for abandoning Hubble. NASA claimed that a mission to Hubble was unacceptably risky, while missions to ISS were not. The board pressed them on just how and why, and the increased risk seemed negligible for such a servicing mission.
However NASA was excited about sending an unmanned robotic mission to service Hubble, and they claimed that there were companies working on proposals to provide that robot.
My take was that this is the result of putting a non-scientist bean-counter (O'Keefe) in charge of NASA, coupled with an administration keen on cutting social funding while simultaneously funding private contractors as though there was no tomorrow.
I'm quite certain you are wrong (about me specifically and assuming all else remains the same). If you just meant 'you' in general, then I agree that it's likely most people wouldn't care.
I tend to care about things that most people just shrug at. You'd have to change *that* about me for me to not care about being RFID tagged.
If this could prevent child-napping, yes I'd put one on my kids.
The odds of being kidnapped (in general, of course if your area has higher stats, then my arguments change) are so low that this sort of thing doesn't do a lot of good. The odds are very high, however, of RFID tags being used for undesirable purposes (unless RFID is well-regulated with regards to privacy, which seems unlikely at this point).
We have:
1. A dubious benefit.
2. A certain detriment.
In complete seriousness, if my parents had tagged me in this way, I'd be very upset with them. I could forgive ignorance on their part (them being fed the line that this is a good thing, and that there are no drawbacks). I could *not* forgive them if they did this with full knowledge (not that I'd disown them or something, just that there would always be this one issue that, regardless of how good our relationship is, I could not forgive).
Now, in Japan the culture is quite different. This doesn't strike me as being too terribly unacceptable there.
Eric's got a song on his site about the FCC: The FCC Song
Am I missing something, or is there basically no story here?
Nope, you're not missing anything. Maybe you're on the wrong site though. This is "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and this story is a story interesting to nerds (software, source code, freedom), as for the "stuff that matters" part, it does matter to some (enough to be a story).
This story is interesting specifically in the fact that sometimes a company can take source code and build a non-open product and not be evil by doing so. Yes, it has happened before, but this is a contemporary example. It's a twist on an old story, "Company takes community source code and there's outrage (ok, we hear this story now and then, but...)--project author pleased with the use of his code (What? Oh, I see, it was BSD style free.)"
There are enough people who are all "Free as in GPL" who might benefit from hearing the point of view of someone who is all "Free as in BSD". It raises the issue for the reader to consider whether they prefer something that's so free it is free to become unfree, or something that's so free it can never become unfree. Which is more free? How do you choose?
Huh, I bet that could be an interesting story, one which could make one think.
In the original cut the lead widget and widgetess were supposed to spend their lives apart, in exile, each dying thinking the other betrayed them, not realizing they really disowned the other to save the other's life.
But the studio made them change it so they lived together in a cottage in exile after the King's wife told him she'd leave him childless if he sent them apart forever.
Stupid Hollywood.
(sheesh, the Alan Smithee conspiracy seems a bit far-fetched--if the guy in charge of the project didn't like what he was doing enough to go pseudonymous in a keynote, he has to be either really, really stupid, or hoping to be fired (or Steved, by some peoples' lexicon). My guess is that it's just Apple's new version of "John/Jane Doe").
From this I deduce that they, indeed, use their own product.
The increased load from the slashdotting was expertly focused onto their server which subsequently vaporized.
If you suffer a grand mal for example, it could give life saving instructions to people around on how to assist you in such a scenario.
A: That guy's freaking out, I think it's a seizure or something... Hey, look at this display on his chest.
B: Cool. Check it out, it can play Tetris.
A: Don't you think we should help him?
B: Two-player Tetris.
A: Oh yeah?
Remind sales force to re-emphasize our commitment to security. Suggest that if they are asked about Firefox to take on the blank stare which indicates you would laugh at the customer's foolishness if you weren't so extraordinarily polite.
If that doesn't work, teach the sales force the monkey-dance.
Also, float new IE motto: I... LOVE... THIS... BROWSER... YEAH!
-Steve Ballmer
About the last thing I'd want to see on TV is the Goatse guy. But you know what? If it takes letting the Goatse guy on TV to defeat the fuckwads like the Parents Television Council, then I say BRING IT ON MR GOATSE!
If ya don't like it just glue your dial on FOX or something.
It's not entirely obvious how to distinguish between the two.
I'm sorry. If someone does something they know is wrong and do it on the air... then they should just own up. There are consequences to your actions. If they screw up they can own up.
That giant sucking sound is you completely missing the point. The complaints here on slashdot are from people who don't think that what the FCC says is wrong is actually wrong. Thus another rule which strengthens the one we disagree with is something we don't like.
This rule strengthens an already awful and repugnant rule.
"Doesn't the government have better things to do?"
Not since FDR it doesn't.
You are an uncritical moron. It's overly obvious to anyone who takes even the most miniscule amount of effort to ponder the issue that there *are* better things for the government to be doing. Does your limited capacity for reason cripple your ability to see that a government ought to be for the people?
Now, think carefully (this is an easy one) are there things more important, that the government could focus on instead of seeking to further censor the airwaves?
(hint: the answer is yes)
In any case, the penguin will always be in peril; in a world with software patents there is no true freedom to innovate with software.
It's not so dire as that. Take every home Linux user, every IT Linux admin, every corporation running Linux (including IB-freakin'-M), and every governmental department running Linux.
Now tell them they must immediately cease and desist in the use of Linux.
Ok, so you just go after the distributions (I don't see exactly how (for example, SuSe is in Germany, and what about all the sub-distributions, mirrors, etc), but let's say you do). Now you are telling all of the above people that their computers will not be upgradable for some time (if ever)--and the only alternatives costs thousands of dollars per computer.
Ok, so you just go after one key package or another (such as Samba). Telling the above (again) that their Samba shares (being used as, critical fileservers) must all be switched over to NT costing, again, thousands of dollars.
Look at the current MS/SCO debacle. This is the best MS can really attempt without risking fatally wounding itself, and the attempt is *laughable*. No one really believed the case MS/SCO put forth, they only feared that some people might believe it and, acting on that belief, run screaming from Linux (or pay SCO, thus potentially legitimizing the case). Didn't happen, because those in the know knew just how pathetic the MS/SCO ploy was.
Maybe you mean that Linux will always be under attack. Sure, that's life. MS is always under attack, Apple is always under attack, Java is always under attack, BSD is always.... Every damn thing in the Universe is always under attack. It's the nature of existence. Everything that exists must face the threat of non-existence.
Don't worry though, Linux is very well suited to weather any individual tactical attack, and the community is too keen on the issues to be steamrolled by any long-term strategy. Sometimes the battle will look huge (and that's because it is), but the world will *really* have to suck in a *huge* way before the battles facing Linux can ever become insurmountable (or something more desirable than Linux would have had to come along, which would be Linux losing in a good way, which you aren't talking about, and which Linus himself, I'm sure, would be happy (though perhaps a little miffed personally) to see).
They lost me in the first paragraph, with "a new worn"
They meant "a new worm".
Hope that helps.
It's plain to see that the article submitter, who is undoubtedly an American, didn't take into account that China is on the other side of the planet and that the "9" in the article, when viewed right-side up is actually a "6", and that the correct story is that China has switched over to IPv6.
I chalk this up as a clear and abject failure of our education system.
To prevent the legions of iPod fans from hunting me down and playing techno music in my ear, I must remain an anonymous coward.
No problem, we logged your IP address.
Techno music in you hear, you say? Yes, you'll scream out for that very thing before the end.
If I'm in a car it's to drive, and drive I will. Music is nice, but there's no sound like a proper exhaust note at 140mph.
You wasted your money on the Beamer. You can get the same note out of an old Nova at half that speed.
(we're talking about the "exhaust note" which periodically gets higher and lower, and includings flashing red and blue lights, right?)
Yeah, yeah, someone says it every time. But seriously, if a company like MS did this, the same people who I see here calling this a 'legitimate business tactic' and 'good marketing' would be calling it a shallow, greedy attempt to abuse market power.
No, I'm fairly sure a lot of slashdotters would rejoice if Microsoft were to delay a product until it's truly ready. Throw in the discontinuation of the current product as well and you've got the ingredients for the declaration of a bonafide Open Source holiday.
On a serious note, I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking the specific action is what people object to. Nobody really cares about integrating a browser into the OS (although the way MS did it, technologically, was a big screw-up--but that confuses the issue, there are many instances (WebKit on OS X, Konqeror on KDE) where it's been done right). It's not the action, it's the ultimate effect the action has on the user that people really are fed up with.
Which brings us back to the topic at hand. What is the effect of Apple's announcement? Media buzz? Big deal, who cares. It doesn't quash Dell or IBM by locking them out of a market, it doesn't pull the rug out from under the consumer. In fact, it's the result of a screw up at Apple, and they're afraid of an already slow and, to some, stale product continuing to get ever more slow and stale. They've fessed up, and humbled themselves before the consumer. What they've done is take a bad situation and do the right thing about it.
This is a good thing, and if MS did it, I, for one, would find it refreshing. Sadly, MS rarely does the right thing, so I have to look to Apple (and, for other but somewhat similar reasons, IBM) for a company that I can feel good about dealing with--that the persuit of money doesn't corrupt everything it touches, as it so often seems to do (such as you see with the RIAA, MS, and Sony's ATRAC players).
All my practice at getting first post on slashdot will finally pay off!
Yeah, too bad you were post 59!
Like I said, I'm a shoo-in!
That PowerBook is as good as mine. As soon as Bill Gates sends me the money for forwarding his test e-mail out, I plan to purchase AppleCare for the PowerBook and maybe get an iTrip for the iPod.
OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! I CAN'T HARDLY WAIT!!!1!!!!!111
Hurry people, start buying the next 5 million or so songs so I can get my new PowerBook soon. I've already ordered a developer's copy of Tiger and I want to try out that new Dashboard widget thingy as soon as possible!
Yes!!! All my practice at getting first post on slashdot will finally pay off!
Sorry to disappoint the rest of you, but that 100,000,000th song PowerBook prize is a good as mine!
Oh, and FISRT POST!!!11!!1!!
(losers!)