Does anybody make caffeinated water, because I want to drink more water and cut down the sugar in soda (diet soda taste like battery acid). Maybe just caffeine pills and bottled watter?! YEAH!
A few companies were making caffeinated water a few years back, and it was really nasty. I'd suggest caffeinated tea if you don't like coffee.
Just stick it through and soon enough you'll be free. Learn to drink water instead.
My advice exactly.
Most of the common addictions (nicoteine, alcohol, caffiene) have a short withdrawl period, usually just a couple of days. I would plan 2 or 3 days for it, over the weekend might be best unless you can take the productivity hit at work. Just accept the fact that you're going to be an irritable jerk for those few days, and maybe forwarn the people you care about.
Drink lots of water, and try to get plenty of sleep. The problem is not so much the lack of caffiene in your system as it is the toxins it leaves behind, and those need to be flushed out.
The rest of the problem is habit, and water will work there to. Whenever you feel like you need a cup of coffee or a can of soda, drink some water instead.
The upside that you have to look forward to is that you won't be nearly as tired all the time, and thus you won't feel so much like you need the stuff. And, of course, on the occasions when you do really need it, a little will go farther than you could possibly imagine now. (I typically have about a half cup of coffee maybe twice a month and it really kicks my ass, and I am NOT a small guy).
You indirectly make a very good point. The place Linux shines best is servers, so the obvious answer is to replace the Win2k server with a Linux one. Not only does this save considerably more money than replacing a few desktops, but it neatly solves the problem of "how do I connect a Linux desktop to my network".
I suggest starting with Nikolai Bezroukov's excellent and very thorough treatment of the subject at SoftPanorama.org
It will indeed take me considerable time to wade through all of it, but I will. However, so far I have seen nothing that supports your notion that the GPL is a stunningly bad idea. Quite the contrary, in fact. It seems so far that Dr. Bezroukov considers the GPL to be largely responsible for the success of Linux (he directly says so at least a few times), and he implies that it is the BSDL that is a bad idea through quotes like this one from Larry McVoy:
"Finally, Linux is covered by the GPL - BSD is not. If BSD ever gets popular again, the people running the show can, and will, take the source access away (try and get all the BSDi source, for example)."
I think that sums up the problem with the BSDL quite nicely.
If you'd care to provide a direct link to where Dr. Bezroukov supports your assertion, I would be happy to read it.
Any suggestions I have for changing the BSD license do NOT turn it into the GPL, but rather are explicitly designed to *prevent* BSD licensed software from being GPL'ed. That was obvious if you were paying attention.
If that is your intention, then it is ill-conceived at best.
First of all, preventing the code from ever being placed under a "more restrictive" license would bring to the BSDL the chief complaint about the GPL: that one can't use the code in a commercial project. The ability to take BSDL code and assimilate it into anything you want is one of the main strengths of the BSDL.
Secondly, it is so easily circumvented. If the code can be relicensed under a "less restrictive" license, what's to stop it from being put under a license like the unmodified BSDL, which is clearly less restrictive, but allows the code to be relicensed under the GPL (or any other license for that matter). If that clause is somehow worded so that it "sticks" to the code, then you have turned the BSDL into exactly the sort of viral license the GPL is; effectively it would be the GPL without the requirement to provide source.
If you don't have a license that specificly says you can redistrubute, you can't! "Redistribution" is basicly publishing, and so it would be covered by basic copyright law.
Re:Much more expensive now...
on
Linux Toys
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· Score: 1
Dude, it was a joke. Note the quotation marks around "project".
You raise some interesting philosophical questions, but unfortunately they are completely irrelevant to the issue at hand (or even to how things are done in the Real World, for that matter), and utterly fail to show how my comparison is incorrect.
A nightclub owner has the right to determine who is or is not allowed to enter. TSO (like any other MMOG, chatroom, discussion board, etc) is essentially than a virtual nightclub. You have presented nothing that contradicts that.
The argument that golf clubs and automatic weapons are equivalent because both could potentially be used to kill somebody is ridiculous.
I agree with the point you're trying to make here, but consider this: according to the law nunchuks are equivalent to an automatic weapon. Arguably nunchuks are less dangerous than a golf club, in the sense that if the wielder is unskilled they are largely only a danger to themselves, which is certainly not the case with a golf club.
I think he makes it rain because he sees the matrix as a nasty, filthy, smelly place, and the rain is a manifestation of his desire to cleans himself of the human stench.
Dear pedantic Slashbots: If cable theft is stealing, why is MP3 downloading "infringement?" Face it; it's stealing
Simple: there is no copyright infringement involved in stealing cable. You see, copyright law covers the right to make copies of a work. COPY-RIGHT, get it? Stealing cable, however, is actual theft of a resource (signal strength), and results in PAYING customers being deprived of it's full benefit.
Downloading MP3s, however, is NOT theft, because it doesn't deprive anyone of anything. It is, however, an unauthorized copy, which makes it a violation of copyright law, and it's existence is an infringement of the right of the copyright holder to control who gets to make copies of their work and under what terms.
You could make the arguement that the copyright holder is deprived of their right of control, and you would be correct, but "stealing" would still not be the proper term. Rights are not "stolen". Do you call it "stealing" when someone is held without due process? No. Do you call it "stealing" when someone isn't allowed to speak their opinions or practice their religeon? No.
For the record, I agree with most of what you've said here, but you should really consider changing your sig. It makes you look ignorant.
Buy your CDs used and go to the concert. Concerts are how musicians actually make money, and in most cases the record company gets nothing (beyond perhaps the band paying back their advance). Obviously, the record company gets nothing from your purchase of the used CD.
Although Maxis does provide the "grass and the air", Maxis did not create the community, which is basically what the Sims Online is all about.
I don't think that's true at all. After all, the TSO community wouldn't exist without Maxis' "air and grass".
Really, this is no different from a nightclub:
The owner creates the environment (ambience, music/DJs, available drinks or food, games, etc). The owner also owns/controls the property (building, room, or in this case server). I don't see anyone making valid arguements that nightclub owners shouldn't be able to keep out or let in anyone they want, or that they shouldn't be able to remove people that they deem to be troublemakers.
Who created the "culture" or "community" around that club is totally irrelevant to their right to determine who is able to enter. The irony is that, given that the owner has the ability to exert that control, there is a compelling arguement that the owner is the one who creates the "community" of the club by determining who can, or in this case who cannot, be a part of it.
TSO is basically the same thing, and Maxis is the owner. It's not magically different just because it's digital.
It costs OEMs money to preload applications and distribute CDs/documentation.
Dude, you completely missed the point: The OEMs are already preloading apps, whether the customer wants them or not, so one would think that they would be interested in an app that costs them less!
Are you suggesting that MS pays them to preload Works? I very much doubt that's the case.
I personally would be in favor of a modified BSD license that would add only one stipulation: that the code can never be placed under another more restrictive license, preventing the modified-BSD-licensed code from being relicensed (and thus effectively "stolen" from the community)
So, in other words, you would turn the BSD license into the GPL. Maybe you should try actually reading the GPL, and understanding how copyright licensing works, before you start spouting off about it's alledged flaws.
Many states already have anti-spam laws, usually based on the junk fax laws. In CA I believe you can sue the spammer for $500 per spam, for example. check the laws of your state, and perhaps even consult a legal professional. Even if your state doesn't have a specific anti-spam law, you might still be able to get them under the junk fax laws. Most of the difficulty is finding out who is actually sending the spam, but you already know that.
You can buy a refurbished eMac for as little as $529.00 from the Apple Store.
I can build a new equivalent or better PC for that, with my choice of win98 or Linux+wine (of which I would choose the later). I know all the Mac-boosters are tired of hearing about how Macs are overpriced, but unfortunately it's still true. I fully admit that iBooks are a great deal, but Apple's desktops are still a bit spendy.
Regardless of the price though, that isn't always a viable option. I have several applications that I use at work for which that simply wouldn't work. For example, I have a station for programming firmware on boards for a product my company builds. The program we use, which is a custom app written specifically for this purpose, needs to have direct access to the hardware, so it doesn't work right on any OS with a HAL. I suspect emulation would cause similar problems.
Additionally, there are many situations where a company might have a device for which Windows is used simply as a user interface. Another product I support at work is in that kind of situation; it can't run any OS newer than WinNT4 SP3. It's an "obsolete" product, so the software won't be updated, but since we serve a professional market we're commited to supporting our products for 7 years after the last ship date (in this case that means another ~5 years), and it's not uncommon to hear about people using our products which we haven't shipped in 15-20 years.
More effective if your intent is to stiffle innovation and competition.
Under your proposal Linux, and indeed pretty much all of the Free/Open Source software we enjoy today, would not exist. Essentially, you're saying that I should be able to copyright, in one fell swoop, every mathematical equation that equals 2. I can't see how that would be anything but a gigantic disaster.
Slightly OT here, but my thinking is go back to the origional 14 year term, and allow unlimited extensions, but at an increasing price. How about the first extension is $1000, and the price doubles with each successive extension. That way, works that are truely profitable can continue to be so, and the cost to society and culture as a whole is reflected in that.
The artist still gets a chance to profit from their work, and when it is no longer profitable enough to continue publishing it, it passes to the public domain, and the danger of all those old movies simply sitting in a vault disintigrating because the copyright owner doesn't feel they're worth maintaining is solved.
He's NOT just arguing semantics, you're entire arguement was based on a false premise. If you want to play that game, though, your playing of the "semantics" card is a blatant attempt at setting up a straw man.
Fine, you are granted rights to control how the work is distributed, for a limited period of time. That doesn't change the point that, as the creator of the work, I naturally expect to be able to control said work.
Bullshit. If you had grown up in a society that didn't have copyright you would have no such expectation. Therefor, it is not natural.
Worse yet, without this control, I can gain no benefit from my efforts, since anyone can now simply reproduce what I've created at very little cost. So why would I ever create anything of value?
You are clearly not an artist, and more importantly, you clearly have no understanding whatsoever of what actually motivates artists. Hint: Piccasso kept painting, even though nobody was willing to pay for any of his stuff until after he was dead.
it is the property of society, whose resources you used to create it.
Really. Well, I wrote my book/poem/etc with my own computer in my own home using electricity I paid for.
Also, apparantly, you are entirely clueless as to how the creative process actually works. Nothing is created in a vaccuum. Every single book/poem/etc you will ever find was influenced by other books/poems/etc that came before it. Those are the resources the grandparent was talking about.
But there is something wrong with copyright; it lasts way to fucking long! They've gone far beyond the point where they "promote progress in science and the useful arts", and are now an active hinderance to them. Since that is their only purpose, according to the US Constitution, I'd say that means they're fundamentally broken.
Add on top of that the fact that all the abuses you list are codified into law, and you have the current state of copyright.
I'm not arguing that copyright should be abolished, that would be stupid. For what it's worth I agree that the principle is sound and usefull, but to say that there is nothing wrong with them is even more stupid than saying they should be abolished.
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Does anybody make caffeinated water, because I want to drink more water and cut down the sugar in soda (diet soda taste like battery acid). Maybe just caffeine pills and bottled watter?! YEAH!
A few companies were making caffeinated water a few years back, and it was really nasty. I'd suggest caffeinated tea if you don't like coffee.
Just stick it through and soon enough you'll be free. Learn to drink water instead.
My advice exactly.
Most of the common addictions (nicoteine, alcohol, caffiene) have a short withdrawl period, usually just a couple of days. I would plan 2 or 3 days for it, over the weekend might be best unless you can take the productivity hit at work. Just accept the fact that you're going to be an irritable jerk for those few days, and maybe forwarn the people you care about.
Drink lots of water, and try to get plenty of sleep. The problem is not so much the lack of caffiene in your system as it is the toxins it leaves behind, and those need to be flushed out.
The rest of the problem is habit, and water will work there to. Whenever you feel like you need a cup of coffee or a can of soda, drink some water instead.
The upside that you have to look forward to is that you won't be nearly as tired all the time, and thus you won't feel so much like you need the stuff. And, of course, on the occasions when you do really need it, a little will go farther than you could possibly imagine now. (I typically have about a half cup of coffee maybe twice a month and it really kicks my ass, and I am NOT a small guy).
My Asus A7N8X has this also. It kicks much ass. Now that Win98 is supposedly retired I think we can expect more vendors to follow Asus' lead here.
You indirectly make a very good point. The place Linux shines best is servers, so the obvious answer is to replace the Win2k server with a Linux one. Not only does this save considerably more money than replacing a few desktops, but it neatly solves the problem of "how do I connect a Linux desktop to my network".
I suggest starting with Nikolai Bezroukov's excellent and very thorough treatment of the subject at SoftPanorama.org
It will indeed take me considerable time to wade through all of it, but I will. However, so far I have seen nothing that supports your notion that the GPL is a stunningly bad idea. Quite the contrary, in fact. It seems so far that Dr. Bezroukov considers the GPL to be largely responsible for the success of Linux (he directly says so at least a few times), and he implies that it is the BSDL that is a bad idea through quotes like this one from Larry McVoy:
"Finally, Linux is covered by the GPL - BSD is not. If BSD ever gets popular again, the people running the show can, and will, take the source access away (try and get all the BSDi source, for example)."
I think that sums up the problem with the BSDL quite nicely.
If you'd care to provide a direct link to where Dr. Bezroukov supports your assertion, I would be happy to read it.
Any suggestions I have for changing the BSD license do NOT turn it into the GPL, but rather are explicitly designed to *prevent* BSD licensed software from being GPL'ed. That was obvious if you were paying attention.
If that is your intention, then it is ill-conceived at best.
First of all, preventing the code from ever being placed under a "more restrictive" license would bring to the BSDL the chief complaint about the GPL: that one can't use the code in a commercial project. The ability to take BSDL code and assimilate it into anything you want is one of the main strengths of the BSDL.
Secondly, it is so easily circumvented. If the code can be relicensed under a "less restrictive" license, what's to stop it from being put under a license like the unmodified BSDL, which is clearly less restrictive, but allows the code to be relicensed under the GPL (or any other license for that matter). If that clause is somehow worded so that it "sticks" to the code, then you have turned the BSDL into exactly the sort of viral license the GPL is; effectively it would be the GPL without the requirement to provide source.
If you don't have a license that specificly says you can redistrubute, you can't! "Redistribution" is basicly publishing, and so it would be covered by basic copyright law.
Dude, it was a joke. Note the quotation marks around "project".
But I'll also bet that it's no substitute for teaching "geeks" how to build birdhouses...
Good Lord, man! Did you learn nothing from "The Breakfast Club"?
growing up a computer addicted child I find that most computer projects are not something you want your mom working on
Maybe you should try finding a different "project" to do with your computer...
You've failed your reading comprehension check. Please reread the article and try again.
You raise some interesting philosophical questions, but unfortunately they are completely irrelevant to the issue at hand (or even to how things are done in the Real World, for that matter), and utterly fail to show how my comparison is incorrect.
A nightclub owner has the right to determine who is or is not allowed to enter. TSO (like any other MMOG, chatroom, discussion board, etc) is essentially than a virtual nightclub. You have presented nothing that contradicts that.
The argument that golf clubs and automatic weapons are equivalent because both could potentially be used to kill somebody is ridiculous.
I agree with the point you're trying to make here, but consider this: according to the law nunchuks are equivalent to an automatic weapon. Arguably nunchuks are less dangerous than a golf club, in the sense that if the wielder is unskilled they are largely only a danger to themselves, which is certainly not the case with a golf club.
I think he makes it rain because he sees the matrix as a nasty, filthy, smelly place, and the rain is a manifestation of his desire to cleans himself of the human stench.
Dear pedantic Slashbots: If cable theft is stealing, why is MP3 downloading "infringement?" Face it; it's stealing
Simple: there is no copyright infringement involved in stealing cable. You see, copyright law covers the right to make copies of a work. COPY-RIGHT, get it? Stealing cable, however, is actual theft of a resource (signal strength), and results in PAYING customers being deprived of it's full benefit.
Downloading MP3s, however, is NOT theft, because it doesn't deprive anyone of anything. It is, however, an unauthorized copy, which makes it a violation of copyright law, and it's existence is an infringement of the right of the copyright holder to control who gets to make copies of their work and under what terms.
You could make the arguement that the copyright holder is deprived of their right of control, and you would be correct, but "stealing" would still not be the proper term. Rights are not "stolen". Do you call it "stealing" when someone is held without due process? No. Do you call it "stealing" when someone isn't allowed to speak their opinions or practice their religeon? No.
For the record, I agree with most of what you've said here, but you should really consider changing your sig. It makes you look ignorant.
Buy your CDs used and go to the concert. Concerts are how musicians actually make money, and in most cases the record company gets nothing (beyond perhaps the band paying back their advance). Obviously, the record company gets nothing from your purchase of the used CD.
Problem solved.
Although Maxis does provide the "grass and the air", Maxis did not create the community, which is basically what the Sims Online is all about.
I don't think that's true at all. After all, the TSO community wouldn't exist without Maxis' "air and grass".
Really, this is no different from a nightclub:
The owner creates the environment (ambience, music/DJs, available drinks or food, games, etc). The owner also owns/controls the property (building, room, or in this case server). I don't see anyone making valid arguements that nightclub owners shouldn't be able to keep out or let in anyone they want, or that they shouldn't be able to remove people that they deem to be troublemakers.
Who created the "culture" or "community" around that club is totally irrelevant to their right to determine who is able to enter. The irony is that, given that the owner has the ability to exert that control, there is a compelling arguement that the owner is the one who creates the "community" of the club by determining who can, or in this case who cannot, be a part of it.
TSO is basically the same thing, and Maxis is the owner. It's not magically different just because it's digital.
It costs OEMs money to preload applications and distribute CDs/documentation.
Dude, you completely missed the point: The OEMs are already preloading apps, whether the customer wants them or not, so one would think that they would be interested in an app that costs them less!
Are you suggesting that MS pays them to preload Works? I very much doubt that's the case.
I personally would be in favor of a modified BSD license that would add only one stipulation: that the code can never be placed under another more restrictive license, preventing the modified-BSD-licensed code from being relicensed (and thus effectively "stolen" from the community)
So, in other words, you would turn the BSD license into the GPL. Maybe you should try actually reading the GPL, and understanding how copyright licensing works, before you start spouting off about it's alledged flaws.
I think it's safe to say that this article is a joke. They recommend Suse 8.3, which does not exist and never will.
You've been trolled.
Many states already have anti-spam laws, usually based on the junk fax laws. In CA I believe you can sue the spammer for $500 per spam, for example. check the laws of your state, and perhaps even consult a legal professional. Even if your state doesn't have a specific anti-spam law, you might still be able to get them under the junk fax laws. Most of the difficulty is finding out who is actually sending the spam, but you already know that.
You can buy a refurbished eMac for as little as $529.00 from the Apple Store.
I can build a new equivalent or better PC for that, with my choice of win98 or Linux+wine (of which I would choose the later). I know all the Mac-boosters are tired of hearing about how Macs are overpriced, but unfortunately it's still true. I fully admit that iBooks are a great deal, but Apple's desktops are still a bit spendy.
Regardless of the price though, that isn't always a viable option. I have several applications that I use at work for which that simply wouldn't work. For example, I have a station for programming firmware on boards for a product my company builds. The program we use, which is a custom app written specifically for this purpose, needs to have direct access to the hardware, so it doesn't work right on any OS with a HAL. I suspect emulation would cause similar problems.
Additionally, there are many situations where a company might have a device for which Windows is used simply as a user interface. Another product I support at work is in that kind of situation; it can't run any OS newer than WinNT4 SP3. It's an "obsolete" product, so the software won't be updated, but since we serve a professional market we're commited to supporting our products for 7 years after the last ship date (in this case that means another ~5 years), and it's not uncommon to hear about people using our products which we haven't shipped in 15-20 years.
More effective if your intent is to stiffle innovation and competition.
Under your proposal Linux, and indeed pretty much all of the Free/Open Source software we enjoy today, would not exist. Essentially, you're saying that I should be able to copyright, in one fell swoop, every mathematical equation that equals 2. I can't see how that would be anything but a gigantic disaster.
Slightly OT here, but my thinking is go back to the origional 14 year term, and allow unlimited extensions, but at an increasing price. How about the first extension is $1000, and the price doubles with each successive extension. That way, works that are truely profitable can continue to be so, and the cost to society and culture as a whole is reflected in that.
The artist still gets a chance to profit from their work, and when it is no longer profitable enough to continue publishing it, it passes to the public domain, and the danger of all those old movies simply sitting in a vault disintigrating because the copyright owner doesn't feel they're worth maintaining is solved.
Oh please, you're arguing semantics.
He's NOT just arguing semantics, you're entire arguement was based on a false premise. If you want to play that game, though, your playing of the "semantics" card is a blatant attempt at setting up a straw man.
Fine, you are granted rights to control how the work is distributed, for a limited period of time. That doesn't change the point that, as the creator of the work, I naturally expect to be able to control said work.
Bullshit. If you had grown up in a society that didn't have copyright you would have no such expectation. Therefor, it is not natural.
Worse yet, without this control, I can gain no benefit from my efforts, since anyone can now simply reproduce what I've created at very little cost. So why would I ever create anything of value?
You are clearly not an artist, and more importantly, you clearly have no understanding whatsoever of what actually motivates artists. Hint: Piccasso kept painting, even though nobody was willing to pay for any of his stuff until after he was dead.
it is the property of society, whose resources you used to create it.
Really. Well, I wrote my book/poem/etc with my own computer in my own home using electricity I paid for.
Also, apparantly, you are entirely clueless as to how the creative process actually works. Nothing is created in a vaccuum. Every single book/poem/etc you will ever find was influenced by other books/poems/etc that came before it. Those are the resources the grandparent was talking about.
But there is something wrong with copyright; it lasts way to fucking long! They've gone far beyond the point where they "promote progress in science and the useful arts", and are now an active hinderance to them. Since that is their only purpose, according to the US Constitution, I'd say that means they're fundamentally broken.
Add on top of that the fact that all the abuses you list are codified into law, and you have the current state of copyright.
I'm not arguing that copyright should be abolished, that would be stupid. For what it's worth I agree that the principle is sound and usefull, but to say that there is nothing wrong with them is even more stupid than saying they should be abolished.