In your list of unjust diddling in other nation's affairs, you forgot a pretty important one. Operation Ajax has come back to bite us in the ass. And, the fallout is still falling, so it's impossible to say how badly we've been bitten.
I'm not blindly in love with my government, after all. My government has committed a number of heinous acts, including forced sterilization for women accepting medical aid in Africa, experimenting on black inmates with gonorhea, subjugating the Native Americans - and much, much more.
Nor am I in love with capitalism. I can only make the same excuse as people who grew up under the Soviet, or people who grew up under Chinese communism. It's pretty much the only thing I know.
That said - what pisses me off is, Corporate America is selling off the products of my grandparent's, greatgrandparent's, etc, sacrifices and efforts to make this nation what it is. .
Poor braindead fool. Take another look around, and tell us again who is controlling and/or taking control of the world. The US, UK, and Europe are slipping backward, while that old "Sleeping Giant" reaches for more and more control. DUHHH!
I've got your natural master - swinging, dude. WTF do you mean by "natural master" anyway? You are claiming that it is natural, right, or just, that one people should subjugate the people around them?
Yes, yes, I know that the US government thinks along those lines, albeit not in the terms you imply. And, yes, I am very sure that the Chinese government thinks the same way - and probably in the terms that you use.
But, I ask, what is RIGHT? Is it right that one people dominate the world, and subjugate all the rest of the peoples?
Gunpowder, yes. Compass? " The earliest Chinese magnetic compasses were probably not designed for navigation, but rather to order and harmonize their environments and buildings in accordance with the geomantic principles of feng shui." Paper? Most definitely not - heard of papyrus? I believe the Egyptians came up with that first. Printing? I really don't think so. "The history of printing started around 3000 BC with the duplication of images. The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress onto clay tablets goes back to early Mesopotamian civilization before 3000 BC, where they are the most common works of art to survive, and feature complex and beautiful images. "
I rather like Wikipedia - but it's not the best source in the world for information. So, without claiming it to be an authority, the Wikipedia does support my views on the matters you mention.
How about I complain about Corporate America and Corporate Globe whoring themselves to China?
Few if any corporations owe their past successes to China. These prostitutes are selling technology discovered by mostly the Western world, and Russia, and some from the third world to China for a short term profit. Yes, 5 years or 10 years is short term. China is the only frigging entity in the world with a long term goal. Assassin's mace.
Oh, but someone will post here again, telling me that's just a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory my ass - we see it happening before our very eyes.
It is their goal to dominate the United States economically, politically, and militarily. And, IBM sells out to China, just as they sold out to the Nazi's before the United States declared war on them.
HEY, IBM!! You owe your current economic position and success to the west!
Not so. You're an AC, probably never look back here again - but browse my posts. I'm not a phanboi of Linux. Linux has it's problems - and foremost among them, from my perspective, is that they are screwing users with their desktop offerings. Unity kinda blows, a lot of people agree to that. KDE kinda sucks, though fewer people agree to that. Many people are agreeing the Gnome sucks - so much so, that Mint is attempting to fork Gnome3, and make it more like Gnome2 was. Enlightenment is really cool, but it's a pain in the ass to configure properly. The rest are still cool, but they just aren't as popular.
Sound on Linux sucks ass more than any other thing. Basically, you have suckass ALSA and Pulse, or you can do the work to get OSS4 up and running. Problem with OSS4, some things (like Google Voice) don't support OSS.
I have my favorite and least favorite OS's, yes. And, it's pretty obvious what those are. But, I'm honest with myself, and with the world. Some things suck in ALL of the OS's.
It just so happens that I think Windows sucks the hardest.
See, there's the problem. Piracy should never have been made a criminal matter. It's properly a civil matter. Enforcement isn't the province of ICE. It is the responsibility of the copyright holder. The matter is properly dealt with in civil court. What we have today is simply insane.
So, you're saying that because it's hard to enforce the law (laws bought and paid for by "rights holders"), that justifies draconian punishments? That, because there are a million pirates not caught for every pirate caught, then the one who is caught should pay for the million others?
Makes a twisted kind of sense, I guess. Since there are millions more speeders who get away with speeding, than there are people caught speeding, the courts should impose penalties of tens of millions of dollars on people caught ten mile over the speed limit.
Businesses can update the code, or get new applications, or hire someone to create the applications they need. No, it does not "needs to remain compatible". They paid for that software however many years ago, they've gotten their use out of it, it's time to move on. Tightwad bastards need to get with the times.
ASSuming that management is intelligent enough to describe what they need to be done, I'm certain that they can find a coder to do whatever it is that needs to be done.
It's that "steadily pruning" that allows malware creators to keep up, or even to keep one step ahead of Microsoft.
They need to make a clean break. The next release of Windows should be that clean break. Microsoft has masters of marketing in their employ. They can tell the world that everything from the old days is out the "Window", and none of it will work on Win8. And, they can hype it up in such a manner that even non-geeks get excited about it.
I'll give grudging credit to Microsoft. Win7 is more secure than any of their previous operating systems. It's just not secure enough, because they have screwed up priorities. Put security first, convenience second, and backward compatibility a distant tenth place. "It might be nice if libraries X, Y and Z worked with Win8, so that Applications a thru z will run - but we're not going to waste time on them. Let the developers of X, Y and Z rewrite them to work in the new world, or they are history."
You didn't. On Youtube, much of what you see are derivative works. Dancing babies, weddings, street dances, etc, are derivative, in that something new was created, using something from the original work.
On the other hand, Vevo seems to be a licensed distributor of soundtracks and videos on Youtube. And, there seems to be an assumption that when I click on the link, I'll view it one time, and one time only. Like most people, I save the video if I like it. Seems reasonable to me.
Get a life, you insecure little shit. Most people come to slashdot looking for serious and/or challenging discussion. The second visible post under the summary, is a rant by some turd who feels that he somehow doesn't measure up to a black man, so he tries hard to convince himself that he is equal to any black man. Phht. Go find something to do. Like, maybe you could paint your Mama's basement, plant some flowers, clean the fly spotted windows, replace the burnt out lights. You know - make that basement more attractive to members of the opposite sex.
Oh - me and my big mouth. Never mind. We don't really want you to breed. Continue as you were.
I'll remind you that each of the products you cite had competition, until Microsoft used their monopolistic advantages to squash that competition.
If, in truth, Microsoft has any "great products", the competitor's products were sometimes greater. It sucks to be deprived of those products, just because Microsoft had the influence to crush them. Look at the close call we had with Java. Imagine a world in which the only surviving JVM was Microsoft's own version.
Those people who define "great products" as those products promoted by the most successful mega corporations would certainly agree with you that Microsoft has a lot of great products. Those of us who define "great products" differently will continue to disagree with you.
I think tort law would cover the problem, nicely. Treble damages. If some guy is found with a library of pirated material, worth a thousand dollars, then he pays three thousand dollars. So - if someone actually went through all my stuff, and discovered all the stuff I've pirated, then I might be liable for - ohhhh - $150.
If they could examine the records of everything I've ever downloaded, and charge me for stuff I've since deleted, then I might be liable for a ballpark figure of $2 - 3,000.
And, if the world were suddenly to act that rational, I might even find myself agreeing with the law. Winning "settlements" of millions against working class people simply makes no sense, unless those working class people were financially profiting from the software, music, movies, or whatever.
The law is not based on reason, to be honest. The law is based on a mixture of morality, reason, and emotion, salted to heavily with economic influence. It has always been so. From my position in the course of history, it seems that the salt of economic influence was reduced at some point (not removed, merely reduced) but that in recent times, the salt content has been steadily increasing.
If the law were based entirely on reason, there would be no need for constitutional amendments to be voted on, or for representatives to spend months and years, hammering out details of oppressive crap like ACTA, or SOPA. In both cases, it's apparent that reasonable people are holding out, until the oppressive turds demanding the law cough up enough money to assuage their consciences.
Carrying capacity. Wow. I thought maybe I was the only guy outside of the game commissions to understand that term.
I'll give you my guess:
This planet could probably sustain about two billion people, comfortably, without pumping tons of oil out of the ground to support our appetite for energy. As I say, that's only a guess. Maybe a half educated guess, but still a guess.
Of course, without the petroleum, a much larger percentage of that population would have to actually work to produce the food necessary to sustain the population. No welfare for baby making do-nothings, for starters. It would be much more of a "no work, no eat" society.
I understand what you're saying, very well. And, decades ago, I would have had to plead "guilty".
I haven't been guilty since I walked out in the streets of an African town, and looked real poverty in the face. Real poverty, that few Americans understand. I outgrew a lot of ignorance on Africa's east coast.
You are quite young, aren't you? And, like most young Americans (alright, I'll be honest, you're like most Americans, young or old) you are infatuated with the rich.
Again, Gates didn't "give" you anything. Way back in the day, every DOS came with a basic. All of them. An MSDos without Basic wouldn't have sold any more than a cheap car without axles or wheels would sell.
Tell ya what - next time you attempt to explain all the good things that Bill has "given" to the world, pick up a dictionary and look up a few words. "Free", "Gratis", "Gift", and more.
My "superiority", if it exists, is NOT established by the existence of photographs of freaks of nature.
You may, however, look at those photos to see who all those nifty gadgets are designed for. Most of those people NEED devices designed for the braindead!
I'd have to agree, if someone told me such a thing.
And, before you run your mouth to fast, and to far, I'm a parent and a grandparent. I have stood in an emergency room, looking at my son's body all torn up, wondering if he was going to live or not. Unlike many a mindless shrieking parent, I looked hard at that son, and told him that Darwin's rules probably applied to him.
Yes, we're overpopulated, and the fact that you and at least 6 billion other people on the planet would deny it has no bearing on the fact.
Writing stupid shit? Hmmmmm - you might take your own advice?
A well deserved "troll" mod, if you ask me. Suddenly, every innovation in the world can be traced back to Apple, Jobs, and Ives? WTF?
As for design and user interfaces mattering to me - you should see my desktop. And, my car. The trucks I've driven. Screw all the designers - I want plain, simple, easy to understand. Understated elegance. Fek the eye candy, glitz, and consumer appeal. I'm not a "consumer".
Economic sanctions kill poor people? I don't think so. Just like most of the rest of the world, Iran is overpopulated. Overpopulation kills more poor people, than economic sanctions can.
It is the unstated mission of Unicef and organizations like them, to force the world to support as large a human population as possible. I can't get behind that mission.
Now, if Unicef's mission were to educate people, and to convince them to control the population, I could support them.
The entire world needs to team up with China, and their once child per couple thing for about 50 to 100 years.
Ignorance. An introspective person might wonder if your own attitude isn't born of ignorance. A person's greed is established long before he graduates from high school, or college, or begins his first business.
Bill Gates has never "given" anything to the world. Linus gave away an operating system. Gave it away. He has never charged me a dime for using his kernel, his logo, his name - nothing. He has never even asked me for a penny. Bill? What did he ever "give" me, or you?
Oh, don't bother to tell me about all the "fine work" he is doing now, after he's robbed the world of more billions than he can spend in the rest of his life. NOW, when he's so filthy rich that every bimbo in the world wants to sleep with him, he gives some money to charities. And, what people fail to see there is, he's trying to buy the only immortality that any man can buy. That "Bill and Melissa" foundation will last at least as long as the Carnegie Institute. Immortality, of a sort.
Slashdot Mirror
In your list of unjust diddling in other nation's affairs, you forgot a pretty important one. Operation Ajax has come back to bite us in the ass. And, the fallout is still falling, so it's impossible to say how badly we've been bitten.
I'm not blindly in love with my government, after all. My government has committed a number of heinous acts, including forced sterilization for women accepting medical aid in Africa, experimenting on black inmates with gonorhea, subjugating the Native Americans - and much, much more.
Nor am I in love with capitalism. I can only make the same excuse as people who grew up under the Soviet, or people who grew up under Chinese communism. It's pretty much the only thing I know.
That said - what pisses me off is, Corporate America is selling off the products of my grandparent's, greatgrandparent's, etc, sacrifices and efforts to make this nation what it is.
.
Poor braindead fool. Take another look around, and tell us again who is controlling and/or taking control of the world. The US, UK, and Europe are slipping backward, while that old "Sleeping Giant" reaches for more and more control. DUHHH!
I've got your natural master - swinging, dude. WTF do you mean by "natural master" anyway? You are claiming that it is natural, right, or just, that one people should subjugate the people around them?
Yes, yes, I know that the US government thinks along those lines, albeit not in the terms you imply. And, yes, I am very sure that the Chinese government thinks the same way - and probably in the terms that you use.
But, I ask, what is RIGHT? Is it right that one people dominate the world, and subjugate all the rest of the peoples?
I say, "Fuck that!"
Gunpowder, yes. Compass? " The earliest Chinese magnetic compasses were probably not designed for navigation, but rather to order and harmonize their environments and buildings in accordance with the geomantic principles of feng shui." Paper? Most definitely not - heard of papyrus? I believe the Egyptians came up with that first. Printing? I really don't think so. "The history of printing started around 3000 BC with the duplication of images. The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress onto clay tablets goes back to early Mesopotamian civilization before 3000 BC, where they are the most common works of art to survive, and feature complex and beautiful images. "
I rather like Wikipedia - but it's not the best source in the world for information. So, without claiming it to be an authority, the Wikipedia does support my views on the matters you mention.
How about I complain about Corporate America and Corporate Globe whoring themselves to China?
Few if any corporations owe their past successes to China. These prostitutes are selling technology discovered by mostly the Western world, and Russia, and some from the third world to China for a short term profit. Yes, 5 years or 10 years is short term. China is the only frigging entity in the world with a long term goal. Assassin's mace.
Oh, but someone will post here again, telling me that's just a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory my ass - we see it happening before our very eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_programme
It is their goal to dominate the United States economically, politically, and militarily. And, IBM sells out to China, just as they sold out to the Nazi's before the United States declared war on them.
HEY, IBM!! You owe your current economic position and success to the west!
Not so. You're an AC, probably never look back here again - but browse my posts. I'm not a phanboi of Linux. Linux has it's problems - and foremost among them, from my perspective, is that they are screwing users with their desktop offerings. Unity kinda blows, a lot of people agree to that. KDE kinda sucks, though fewer people agree to that. Many people are agreeing the Gnome sucks - so much so, that Mint is attempting to fork Gnome3, and make it more like Gnome2 was. Enlightenment is really cool, but it's a pain in the ass to configure properly. The rest are still cool, but they just aren't as popular.
Sound on Linux sucks ass more than any other thing. Basically, you have suckass ALSA and Pulse, or you can do the work to get OSS4 up and running. Problem with OSS4, some things (like Google Voice) don't support OSS.
I have my favorite and least favorite OS's, yes. And, it's pretty obvious what those are. But, I'm honest with myself, and with the world. Some things suck in ALL of the OS's.
It just so happens that I think Windows sucks the hardest.
The United States is innovative. Congress is finding innovative ways to usher in an Orwellian nightmare. Have you protested SOPA today?
See, there's the problem. Piracy should never have been made a criminal matter. It's properly a civil matter. Enforcement isn't the province of ICE. It is the responsibility of the copyright holder. The matter is properly dealt with in civil court. What we have today is simply insane.
So, you're saying that because it's hard to enforce the law (laws bought and paid for by "rights holders"), that justifies draconian punishments? That, because there are a million pirates not caught for every pirate caught, then the one who is caught should pay for the million others?
Makes a twisted kind of sense, I guess. Since there are millions more speeders who get away with speeding, than there are people caught speeding, the courts should impose penalties of tens of millions of dollars on people caught ten mile over the speed limit.
Yeah, I'm sure we can all get on board with that.
Businesses can update the code, or get new applications, or hire someone to create the applications they need. No, it does not "needs to remain compatible". They paid for that software however many years ago, they've gotten their use out of it, it's time to move on. Tightwad bastards need to get with the times.
ASSuming that management is intelligent enough to describe what they need to be done, I'm certain that they can find a coder to do whatever it is that needs to be done.
It's that "steadily pruning" that allows malware creators to keep up, or even to keep one step ahead of Microsoft.
They need to make a clean break. The next release of Windows should be that clean break. Microsoft has masters of marketing in their employ. They can tell the world that everything from the old days is out the "Window", and none of it will work on Win8. And, they can hype it up in such a manner that even non-geeks get excited about it.
I'll give grudging credit to Microsoft. Win7 is more secure than any of their previous operating systems. It's just not secure enough, because they have screwed up priorities. Put security first, convenience second, and backward compatibility a distant tenth place. "It might be nice if libraries X, Y and Z worked with Win8, so that Applications a thru z will run - but we're not going to waste time on them. Let the developers of X, Y and Z rewrite them to work in the new world, or they are history."
You didn't. On Youtube, much of what you see are derivative works. Dancing babies, weddings, street dances, etc, are derivative, in that something new was created, using something from the original work.
On the other hand, Vevo seems to be a licensed distributor of soundtracks and videos on Youtube. And, there seems to be an assumption that when I click on the link, I'll view it one time, and one time only. Like most people, I save the video if I like it. Seems reasonable to me.
Get a life, you insecure little shit. Most people come to slashdot looking for serious and/or challenging discussion. The second visible post under the summary, is a rant by some turd who feels that he somehow doesn't measure up to a black man, so he tries hard to convince himself that he is equal to any black man. Phht. Go find something to do. Like, maybe you could paint your Mama's basement, plant some flowers, clean the fly spotted windows, replace the burnt out lights. You know - make that basement more attractive to members of the opposite sex.
Oh - me and my big mouth. Never mind. We don't really want you to breed. Continue as you were.
Define "great products".
I'll remind you that each of the products you cite had competition, until Microsoft used their monopolistic advantages to squash that competition.
If, in truth, Microsoft has any "great products", the competitor's products were sometimes greater. It sucks to be deprived of those products, just because Microsoft had the influence to crush them. Look at the close call we had with Java. Imagine a world in which the only surviving JVM was Microsoft's own version.
Those people who define "great products" as those products promoted by the most successful mega corporations would certainly agree with you that Microsoft has a lot of great products. Those of us who define "great products" differently will continue to disagree with you.
I think tort law would cover the problem, nicely. Treble damages. If some guy is found with a library of pirated material, worth a thousand dollars, then he pays three thousand dollars. So - if someone actually went through all my stuff, and discovered all the stuff I've pirated, then I might be liable for - ohhhh - $150.
If they could examine the records of everything I've ever downloaded, and charge me for stuff I've since deleted, then I might be liable for a ballpark figure of $2 - 3,000.
And, if the world were suddenly to act that rational, I might even find myself agreeing with the law. Winning "settlements" of millions against working class people simply makes no sense, unless those working class people were financially profiting from the software, music, movies, or whatever.
The law is not based on reason, to be honest. The law is based on a mixture of morality, reason, and emotion, salted to heavily with economic influence. It has always been so. From my position in the course of history, it seems that the salt of economic influence was reduced at some point (not removed, merely reduced) but that in recent times, the salt content has been steadily increasing.
If the law were based entirely on reason, there would be no need for constitutional amendments to be voted on, or for representatives to spend months and years, hammering out details of oppressive crap like ACTA, or SOPA. In both cases, it's apparent that reasonable people are holding out, until the oppressive turds demanding the law cough up enough money to assuage their consciences.
Carrying capacity. Wow. I thought maybe I was the only guy outside of the game commissions to understand that term.
I'll give you my guess:
This planet could probably sustain about two billion people, comfortably, without pumping tons of oil out of the ground to support our appetite for energy. As I say, that's only a guess. Maybe a half educated guess, but still a guess.
Of course, without the petroleum, a much larger percentage of that population would have to actually work to produce the food necessary to sustain the population. No welfare for baby making do-nothings, for starters. It would be much more of a "no work, no eat" society.
I understand what you're saying, very well. And, decades ago, I would have had to plead "guilty".
I haven't been guilty since I walked out in the streets of an African town, and looked real poverty in the face. Real poverty, that few Americans understand. I outgrew a lot of ignorance on Africa's east coast.
You are quite young, aren't you? And, like most young Americans (alright, I'll be honest, you're like most Americans, young or old) you are infatuated with the rich.
Again, Gates didn't "give" you anything. Way back in the day, every DOS came with a basic. All of them. An MSDos without Basic wouldn't have sold any more than a cheap car without axles or wheels would sell.
Tell ya what - next time you attempt to explain all the good things that Bill has "given" to the world, pick up a dictionary and look up a few words. "Free", "Gratis", "Gift", and more.
Either you failed to read my post, or you failed to understand it, or you just ignored it. I don't guess it matters much. Have your say.
*cough*
My "superiority", if it exists, is NOT established by the existence of photographs of freaks of nature.
You may, however, look at those photos to see who all those nifty gadgets are designed for. Most of those people NEED devices designed for the braindead!
I'd have to agree, if someone told me such a thing.
And, before you run your mouth to fast, and to far, I'm a parent and a grandparent. I have stood in an emergency room, looking at my son's body all torn up, wondering if he was going to live or not. Unlike many a mindless shrieking parent, I looked hard at that son, and told him that Darwin's rules probably applied to him.
Yes, we're overpopulated, and the fact that you and at least 6 billion other people on the planet would deny it has no bearing on the fact.
Writing stupid shit? Hmmmmm - you might take your own advice?
A well deserved "troll" mod, if you ask me. Suddenly, every innovation in the world can be traced back to Apple, Jobs, and Ives? WTF?
As for design and user interfaces mattering to me - you should see my desktop. And, my car. The trucks I've driven. Screw all the designers - I want plain, simple, easy to understand. Understated elegance. Fek the eye candy, glitz, and consumer appeal. I'm not a "consumer".
Want to see "consumers"?? http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/photos/
Economic sanctions kill poor people? I don't think so. Just like most of the rest of the world, Iran is overpopulated. Overpopulation kills more poor people, than economic sanctions can.
It is the unstated mission of Unicef and organizations like them, to force the world to support as large a human population as possible. I can't get behind that mission.
Now, if Unicef's mission were to educate people, and to convince them to control the population, I could support them.
The entire world needs to team up with China, and their once child per couple thing for about 50 to 100 years.
Ignorance. An introspective person might wonder if your own attitude isn't born of ignorance. A person's greed is established long before he graduates from high school, or college, or begins his first business.
Bill Gates has never "given" anything to the world. Linus gave away an operating system. Gave it away. He has never charged me a dime for using his kernel, his logo, his name - nothing. He has never even asked me for a penny. Bill? What did he ever "give" me, or you?
Oh, don't bother to tell me about all the "fine work" he is doing now, after he's robbed the world of more billions than he can spend in the rest of his life. NOW, when he's so filthy rich that every bimbo in the world wants to sleep with him, he gives some money to charities. And, what people fail to see there is, he's trying to buy the only immortality that any man can buy. That "Bill and Melissa" foundation will last at least as long as the Carnegie Institute. Immortality, of a sort.