Drugged or not, how could he possibly walk out of a military complex, in a war zone, during the night, armed with war weapons, without anyone noticing him?
There are some differences between working at a manufacturing line, where you can't literally have a pause to pee because the line will go on with or without you, and waiting behind a desk for patients to call you. Also, there's a difference between getting paid 16,000 $ a month (a doctor in the USA) and 300 $ a month (a worker at Foxconn).
I think that all those commenters believing that China's working conditions are OK should be "re-educated", in the Mao sense, by working for a year at some Foxconn manufacturing line (without access to their american bank account for the whole period, of course).
My Blackberry phone was built in Hungary, a free country (if a bit on the fascist side). My previous Nokia phone was built in Finland, a free country. My current HTC phone was built in Taiwan, a free country.
The "no alternatives" defense is just the typical excuse given by the exploiters to justify their status quo.
A fission nuclear bomb consumes a large part of its fissile fuel for its explosion. And it contains a small amount of it, to begin with. When a nuclear reactor blows up, it is usually a non-nuclear explosion (steam release, graphite fire) that spreads unspent nuclear fuel all over an area. They're two different phenomena.
I don't know if you belong to an elite or not, and I don't care. I never said you did. When I hear the word "fraternity", used in conjunction with "liberty" and "equality", I assume that it's carrying the meaning that the French revolution attached to it, and therefore by "fraternity" I mean the whole community of the people living in a country, as opposed to your rich friends' clubs (or any other community for that matter).
Under that assumption, I read "individuals will mostly prefer liberty over fraternity" as "individuals don't need politics to intervene and help them satisfy their needs, because freedom will take care of everything for them". Which is more true from a rich person's perspective, who through the synergy of liberty and his personal wealth can solve most of his problems, whereas a not-so-rich person will often find that his liberty won't allow him to overcome certain obstacles.
Where do you see a judgement when I say that rich people don't need to care about other people helping them? Did I say "filthy egoist rich people don't need help from the exploited heroic proletariat"? No. "Little mean and rich" are your words, not mine. Why should wealth be a guilt, when there is equality in a society (and see, perhaps the three values are not so conflicting after all)?
I suggest you go look for the compensation of the senior mandarins in Bruxelles and Strasbourg, because it seems that it proves you if not wrong or at least a bit free with your opinion.
Why, I even posted a comment about the excessive compensations of the EU bureaucrats here on/. a couple of days ago. By the way, aren't the EU politicians the ones who are desmantling the time-honoured welfare states across all Europe? Talk about love for "fraternity" by the elite.
you implied that the appetite for liberty is proportional to wealth, and as the noted billionaire Martin Luther King would say, come off the high horse.
No, I implied that the appetite for fraternity decreases with wealth. And I did not give any *moral* judgement over the people falling on either side of the wealth scale.
My statement does not contain any judgement, none at all, so I am surprised by yourself getting defensive to the point that you felt the need to offend me.
It seems obvious to me that those who already have much, will be less likely to be interested in getting help from the others. Because they don't need it.
My correction to GP was needed, in my extremely humble opinion, because I think that smuggling the elite's own values as absolute ones is not correct.
I know that the "slippery slope" is no real argument; but this DRM thing has already crossed the border between ridiculous and creepy. An invisible technology sniffing all the media I play whether they're protected or not? "Subliminal" messages embedded inside the sound with the user not even knowing that they exist? Both of them mandatory for all players? What if they start embedding other information against the user's will? For instance, device serial numbers or personal identification codes? I think this kind of actions goes beyond what they can stuff in fine print EULAs that the average user won't bother reading / does not have the technical ability to understand. This stuff should be illegal.
Oh and by the way, the article suggest that we should be happy because we can just let Blu-Ray die and resort to digital downloads instead. I call bullshit on that: first, because digital downloads require infrastructure that simply isn't there yet (and won't be there soon), and second because digital downloads are equally infested with DRM and, by their own nature, give the user even less control over the storage and playback of the media. Doubly so if the downloads are stored "in the cloud" as the article suggests.
the rich will mostly prefer liberty over fraternity
There, FTFY
Re:And now it's time to bow out gracefully
on
GCC Turns 25
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· Score: 2
What's funny is that people keep saying that the extremists are the GNU supporters, because the license they use has a political stance and whatnot. Look at this discussion - one third of the comments are from BSD fans hijacking a discussion about GCC to promote their own thing.
Long live GCC, IMHO the major reason why we no longer pay for compilers as we used to.
Parents have no say over teachers' choice of readings in Italy. It's almost impossible to fire a teacher there; in order to get fired, a teacher must at least beat his students (in certain parts of the country, the converse is much more likely to happen though).
By the age of 14, italian students must have already studied (by ministerial programme) important pieces of italian literature such as the Decameron (a kind of "the Canterbury Tales") which contain many stories with explicit (and sometimes colourful) references to sexuality.
Oh come on, the article even envisages the hypothesis that the whole program was a deliberate attempt to kill Gagarin because he had become too popular. It's based on a blog post which was in its turn based on the account of a single person (a KGB agent). And the author of that post himself published another blog post questioning the validity of those claims (link).
And even if we assume that the ex KGB officer says the truth, the story is different from someone "forcing people into capsules they knew were doomed" as was said here.
But one key difference is that sending a teacher isn't inherently more dangerous than sending anyone else. A new maneuver is inherently dangerous and requires more analysis, testing, and listening to engineers.
But the accident had nothing to do with the difficulties of the maneuver. In fact, the second craft was never launched after the first one experienced problems. So the stupidity of Breznev didn't directly casuse the accident, contrary to what the journalist wants to make us think.
I don't believe that article. It says that the Russians sent the cosmonaut to die because:
USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev decided it would be a nifty idea to show those Americans how space flight is done by staging a mid-space rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships
Except that the death of a cosmonaut would go in the opposite direction: cast doubts upon the russian space program and lower the morale of future cosmonauts. So either the premise of the article is bullshit (the Russians didn't know that he would die) or the Russians were incredibly stupid (they thought that killing a person would improve their image).
Now, as we've read here on/. recently, before the Challenger disaster, some engineers warned the NASA management about the possibility of the accident, and tried to stop the launch. The management ignored them, and the disaster happened. Would you write an article saying that
USA leader Ronald Reagan decided it would be a nifty idea to show those Russians how space flight is done by sending a teacher in space
and that the Challenger was a suicide mission, going on to describe the physical appearance of the charred remains of those who died? That would be exceptionally naive and disrespectful. Which is what I think of the discovery.com article.
I think it's nice to add, as a background to the discussion, that each of the invaluable members of the European Parliament earns something like 6,200 € a month, plus 304 € for each day they're actually at the parliament, plus 4,299 € to cover general expenses, plus up to 19,709 € to pay their assistants. Of course you can't afford to pay train tickets with such a wage, so they also get their housing and transportation costs reimbursed. After they're done with their precious services, they'll get a pension of 1,392 € a month for a single mandate, 2,784 € for two, and 5,569 € if they've stayed in the parliament for more than 20 years.
It's normal that after taking all that public money, they want to give 113% of their energies, in order not to let the community down.
Perfect. And do you do it because you are forced to, or because you want to reward the authors? That's the difference.
I'm not advocating for piracy. I'm advocating for reform.
No. Because intelligence isn't equally distributed among all mankind, and neither is creativity. Fact.
I don't think so. You're outlining a caste of self-defined special beings who must receive a special treatment because they're the only ones able to perform a certain task. It's not that different from what the powerful believed in the past, for example in France before the french revolution. Certainly to them the idea of putting the government into the hands of ignorant, head-cutting mobs must have appeared foolish.
I can't accept that. Rules must be equal for everyone and the world usually gets better when they are.
So how long do they get? A day? A week? 1 microsecond after one copy gets out in the wild? How long should an inventor be allowed to "live on the profits" of an invention?
This should be decided by the people who pay them. If an inventor does not agree with the kind of payment that his customers are willing to withstand, then he's perfectly free to keep his invention for himself. But then he can't cry foul if another inventor makes the same idea available for a lesser price.
Say someone invents a cure for cancer. What's that worth? A week of lunches at Denny's? Just a note in the newspaper?
I think the government should award such a breaktrough with taxpayers' money, and the discovery should be put in the public domain as soon as possible. If the discovery was done by a researcher working for a pharmaceutical firm, then he already would have a monthly/project-based wage, and its employer could take advantage for being the first to market. Apple for example made a ton of money by starting to sell a copiable product in a certain market before others.
What about Photoshop? All those tools, all that capability... what's it really worth? And how come you get to decide? C'mon, tell us.
Indeed, I see software developers having a hard time selling generic software that can be freely copied. They should focus on solving problems tailored to specific situations, which can't be duplicated. For example, selling support packages. Or installing the software where it needs to run. How come RedHat are able to make tens of millions, even though everybody can copy the software they sell?
In fact, if you think about it, coding Photoshop would probably have been much easier if its authors were free to re-use other people's work to finish it. A great optimization in the use of resources.
Hold on now... this isn't the same issue at all -- you've moved the goalposts. I agree completely: If indeed one uses one's own intellect to solve a problem, one should have the absolute right to use the fruits of that solution. This is not constitutionally prohibited, or even mentioned, nor is it readily defensible. It's just really bad law, like a lot of law. Photoshop exists; this has no bearing on your right to use, or invent, the Gimp, or Paintshop Pro, or Aperture. Ibuprofin exists; this should have no bearing on your right to invent, or use, bufferin or aspirin (similar drugs with similar ingredients.)
I'm refering to patents here, aren't those the worst form of IP? What does Photoshop display when it starts, in its splash screen? Dozens and dozens of patents prohibiting people from implementing *by themselves* the same stuff that Photoshop does. Even without looking at Photoshop's code. Even if they live on the other side of the planet and aren't even aware that Photoshop exists. And what about patented drugs? Why should a poor country renounce to protect their citizens' health if they can't af
Intellectual property has value Therefore, we want people to produce it
Then pay them, as you would pay a farmer to grow crops, which too have value.
Compared to the population at large, producers of IP are rare
Don't you think you're being a bit elitist by assuming that intelligence isn't equally distributed among mankind? Intellectual jobs are jobs like all the others. Remember that we're not talking about designing a nuclear power plant here, we're talking about IP in general. My grandfather didn't finish elementary school, and was a carpenter. In his spare time, he made paintings and acted in the local theatre.
Also, IP can be expensive and/or time-consuming to produce If the producers are not repaid in a manner that sufficiently encourages them they will be less inclined to produce
That's why I never said that IP producers shouldn't be paid by those who need their services. At the same time, if those services are already available at no cost, then their customers should be able to get them for free, and pay IP producers to solve other problems instead. That's how mankind progresses. If governments want to contribute to the scientific or artistic development, then they can fund public education, research and entertainment.
So we should make sure that said production is rewarded, not shared without recompense Hence, society rightfully sees "sharing" as criminal behavior
Well, I am a part of society, I'm all for paying IP producers for their work, but not for them living on the profits of their past work without producing new one. Therefore, I see sharing of already existing IP not only as a non-criminal behaviour, but as a positive one, to be encouraged in the interest of the progress of mankind. Instead, I see defrauding people of the right to use their intellect to solve their problems, for the sole reason that someone else had reserved the rights for that procedure, as unethical behaviour, even unhuman in certain cases.
Information may want to be free, but IP producers want to pay the mortgage.
That's a desire IP producers share with bricklayers, gardeners, doctors. The latter manage to get a living without governmental protection, perhaps IP producers could do the same. By defending the status quo as "the best possible world", we'd be still living in the ancien régime.
I think he doesn't really believe that, as he probably wouldn't open a site in defense of, say, car thieves. IMHO he just said that as a clumsy attempt of captatio benevolentiae for the more "politically correct" audience.
As it currently stand the purchase once and give away free to everyone is not sustainable. What do you propose those industries do then? I'm not saying it's gonna happen tomorrow, but
Why should I give a damn thing about the industries? Do the industries care about me? Do they care about the workers they fire when they move manufacturing to overseas sweatshops? Do they care about how they make their own country poorer when they move their capitals into tax havens? Did we care when cars destroyed the economy of the horse? A failed business model must be failed for a reason, and therefore it's best to let it die.
outline to me how "sharing" would not eventually kill these intangibles based industries we all love so much?
If people love the industry so much, then those who do can pay for it by themselves. It's absurd that the Government must pass laws, spend money to uphold them, and limit the freedom of all its citizens, to create an imaginary property for those industries to sell.
All property, tangible or not, exists only because the Government defines and protects it. Tangible property needs to be protected because it can't be duplicated. Intellectual property hasn't that problem.
It's a scam; the insider is selling something, knowing that it will lose its value. It's akin to selling a broken product, or better, one which will break soon after the customer bought it.
It does work. I tried it personally and it was usable. Better than a netbook. The machine in question had 3 GB of RAM, though, which isn't common among computers of its age. I don't know how well it would work with less RAM, but since as you say Windows 7 runs on netbooks with just 1 GB of RAM, it might work as well, if sluggish. The crippling of the OS that MS mandates on netbooks is more political than technical (e.g. I don't think that changing the desktop wallpaper has anything to do with performance... it did back in the times of Windows 3.1, but then the alternative was a solid or stippled background, not just another JPEG with a Windows logo).
I don't understand either (nor I understand why you were modded "redundant"). Some desktop machines you can buy even now still have floppy drives. It's even more understandable for PA machines to have them, since they may have had special compatibility requirements until a couple years ago. And even if we assume that those PCs were not exactly new, since they're not supposed to run Crysis, as a taxpayer I'm happier if my administrators can take the most out of not-so-old machines instead of watching them spend tax money on the latest hip hardware. Windows 7 runs successfully on Pentium IV hardware. Linux does even better.
Slashdot Mirror
Drugged or not, how could he possibly walk out of a military complex, in a war zone, during the night, armed with war weapons, without anyone noticing him?
Yes, that's sad. That's what happens when companies are taken over by foreign investors with no interest in the company, let alone its workers.
There are some differences between working at a manufacturing line, where you can't literally have a pause to pee because the line will go on with or without you, and waiting behind a desk for patients to call you. Also, there's a difference between getting paid 16,000 $ a month (a doctor in the USA) and 300 $ a month (a worker at Foxconn).
I think that all those commenters believing that China's working conditions are OK should be "re-educated", in the Mao sense, by working for a year at some Foxconn manufacturing line (without access to their american bank account for the whole period, of course).
The "no alternatives" defense is just the typical excuse given by the exploiters to justify their status quo.
A fission nuclear bomb consumes a large part of its fissile fuel for its explosion. And it contains a small amount of it, to begin with. When a nuclear reactor blows up, it is usually a non-nuclear explosion (steam release, graphite fire) that spreads unspent nuclear fuel all over an area. They're two different phenomena.
improved support of Windows 8 regarding different screen sizes, resolutions and pixel densities
. Windows 8 is actually a regression from this point of view.
Under that assumption, I read "individuals will mostly prefer liberty over fraternity" as "individuals don't need politics to intervene and help them satisfy their needs, because freedom will take care of everything for them". Which is more true from a rich person's perspective, who through the synergy of liberty and his personal wealth can solve most of his problems, whereas a not-so-rich person will often find that his liberty won't allow him to overcome certain obstacles.
Where do you see a judgement when I say that rich people don't need to care about other people helping them? Did I say "filthy egoist rich people don't need help from the exploited heroic proletariat"? No. "Little mean and rich" are your words, not mine. Why should wealth be a guilt, when there is equality in a society (and see, perhaps the three values are not so conflicting after all)?
Why, I even posted a comment about the excessive compensations of the EU bureaucrats here on /. a couple of days ago. By the way, aren't the EU politicians the ones who are desmantling the time-honoured welfare states across all Europe? Talk about love for "fraternity" by the elite.
No, I implied that the appetite for fraternity decreases with wealth. And I did not give any *moral* judgement over the people falling on either side of the wealth scale.
It seems obvious to me that those who already have much, will be less likely to be interested in getting help from the others. Because they don't need it.
My correction to GP was needed, in my extremely humble opinion, because I think that smuggling the elite's own values as absolute ones is not correct.
Oh and by the way, the article suggest that we should be happy because we can just let Blu-Ray die and resort to digital downloads instead. I call bullshit on that: first, because digital downloads require infrastructure that simply isn't there yet (and won't be there soon), and second because digital downloads are equally infested with DRM and, by their own nature, give the user even less control over the storage and playback of the media. Doubly so if the downloads are stored "in the cloud" as the article suggests.
There, FTFY
Long live GCC, IMHO the major reason why we no longer pay for compilers as we used to.
By the age of 14, italian students must have already studied (by ministerial programme) important pieces of italian literature such as the Decameron (a kind of "the Canterbury Tales") which contain many stories with explicit (and sometimes colourful) references to sexuality.
And even if we assume that the ex KGB officer says the truth, the story is different from someone "forcing people into capsules they knew were doomed" as was said here.
But the accident had nothing to do with the difficulties of the maneuver. In fact, the second craft was never launched after the first one experienced problems. So the stupidity of Breznev didn't directly casuse the accident, contrary to what the journalist wants to make us think.
Except that the death of a cosmonaut would go in the opposite direction: cast doubts upon the russian space program and lower the morale of future cosmonauts. So either the premise of the article is bullshit (the Russians didn't know that he would die) or the Russians were incredibly stupid (they thought that killing a person would improve their image).
Now, as we've read here on /. recently, before the Challenger disaster, some engineers warned the NASA management about the possibility of the accident, and tried to stop the launch. The management ignored them, and the disaster happened. Would you write an article saying that
and that the Challenger was a suicide mission, going on to describe the physical appearance of the charred remains of those who died? That would be exceptionally naive and disrespectful. Which is what I think of the discovery.com article.
It's normal that after taking all that public money, they want to give 113% of their energies, in order not to let the community down.
Perfect. And do you do it because you are forced to, or because you want to reward the authors? That's the difference.
I'm not advocating for piracy. I'm advocating for reform.
I don't think so. You're outlining a caste of self-defined special beings who must receive a special treatment because they're the only ones able to perform a certain task. It's not that different from what the powerful believed in the past, for example in France before the french revolution. Certainly to them the idea of putting the government into the hands of ignorant, head-cutting mobs must have appeared foolish.
I can't accept that. Rules must be equal for everyone and the world usually gets better when they are.
This should be decided by the people who pay them. If an inventor does not agree with the kind of payment that his customers are willing to withstand, then he's perfectly free to keep his invention for himself. But then he can't cry foul if another inventor makes the same idea available for a lesser price.
I think the government should award such a breaktrough with taxpayers' money, and the discovery should be put in the public domain as soon as possible. If the discovery was done by a researcher working for a pharmaceutical firm, then he already would have a monthly/project-based wage, and its employer could take advantage for being the first to market. Apple for example made a ton of money by starting to sell a copiable product in a certain market before others.
Indeed, I see software developers having a hard time selling generic software that can be freely copied. They should focus on solving problems tailored to specific situations, which can't be duplicated. For example, selling support packages. Or installing the software where it needs to run. How come RedHat are able to make tens of millions, even though everybody can copy the software they sell?
In fact, if you think about it, coding Photoshop would probably have been much easier if its authors were free to re-use other people's work to finish it. A great optimization in the use of resources.
I'm refering to patents here, aren't those the worst form of IP? What does Photoshop display when it starts, in its splash screen? Dozens and dozens of patents prohibiting people from implementing *by themselves* the same stuff that Photoshop does. Even without looking at Photoshop's code. Even if they live on the other side of the planet and aren't even aware that Photoshop exists. And what about patented drugs? Why should a poor country renounce to protect their citizens' health if they can't af
Then pay them, as you would pay a farmer to grow crops, which too have value.
Don't you think you're being a bit elitist by assuming that intelligence isn't equally distributed among mankind? Intellectual jobs are jobs like all the others. Remember that we're not talking about designing a nuclear power plant here, we're talking about IP in general. My grandfather didn't finish elementary school, and was a carpenter. In his spare time, he made paintings and acted in the local theatre.
That's why I never said that IP producers shouldn't be paid by those who need their services. At the same time, if those services are already available at no cost, then their customers should be able to get them for free, and pay IP producers to solve other problems instead. That's how mankind progresses. If governments want to contribute to the scientific or artistic development, then they can fund public education, research and entertainment.
Well, I am a part of society, I'm all for paying IP producers for their work, but not for them living on the profits of their past work without producing new one. Therefore, I see sharing of already existing IP not only as a non-criminal behaviour, but as a positive one, to be encouraged in the interest of the progress of mankind. Instead, I see defrauding people of the right to use their intellect to solve their problems, for the sole reason that someone else had reserved the rights for that procedure, as unethical behaviour, even unhuman in certain cases.
That's a desire IP producers share with bricklayers, gardeners, doctors. The latter manage to get a living without governmental protection, perhaps IP producers could do the same. By defending the status quo as "the best possible world", we'd be still living in the ancien régime.
What? Weren't those all 00000000?
I think he doesn't really believe that, as he probably wouldn't open a site in defense of, say, car thieves. IMHO he just said that as a clumsy attempt of captatio benevolentiae for the more "politically correct" audience.
Why should I give a damn thing about the industries? Do the industries care about me? Do they care about the workers they fire when they move manufacturing to overseas sweatshops? Do they care about how they make their own country poorer when they move their capitals into tax havens? Did we care when cars destroyed the economy of the horse? A failed business model must be failed for a reason, and therefore it's best to let it die.
If people love the industry so much, then those who do can pay for it by themselves. It's absurd that the Government must pass laws, spend money to uphold them, and limit the freedom of all its citizens, to create an imaginary property for those industries to sell.
All property, tangible or not, exists only because the Government defines and protects it. Tangible property needs to be protected because it can't be duplicated. Intellectual property hasn't that problem.
It's a scam; the insider is selling something, knowing that it will lose its value. It's akin to selling a broken product, or better, one which will break soon after the customer bought it.
It does work. I tried it personally and it was usable. Better than a netbook. The machine in question had 3 GB of RAM, though, which isn't common among computers of its age. I don't know how well it would work with less RAM, but since as you say Windows 7 runs on netbooks with just 1 GB of RAM, it might work as well, if sluggish. The crippling of the OS that MS mandates on netbooks is more political than technical (e.g. I don't think that changing the desktop wallpaper has anything to do with performance... it did back in the times of Windows 3.1, but then the alternative was a solid or stippled background, not just another JPEG with a Windows logo).
I don't understand either (nor I understand why you were modded "redundant"). Some desktop machines you can buy even now still have floppy drives. It's even more understandable for PA machines to have them, since they may have had special compatibility requirements until a couple years ago. And even if we assume that those PCs were not exactly new, since they're not supposed to run Crysis, as a taxpayer I'm happier if my administrators can take the most out of not-so-old machines instead of watching them spend tax money on the latest hip hardware. Windows 7 runs successfully on Pentium IV hardware. Linux does even better.
Opinion.
Weasel words.
Emotion.
Facts: still missing.