Uhhhh - what good would Viagra do government? I can't tell that anyone in Washington actually has any balls, so they are likely lacking the other parts of the male reproductive tool . . .
This is the most "correct" answer to the question, even though the question was poorly shaped.
Judges tend to escalate the penalties for repeat offenders. Get your first DWI, the judge is going to slap your fingers, and let you grovel and plead your way out of serious penalties. The second time, he'll allow you to grovel, then whap your peepee. (Cheech and Chong reference, for you youngsters) Third offense, he's going to lock your ass up, give you a hefty fine, take your license, and give you some community service, as a minimum. And, he'll warn you NOT to come back and see him again, because he WILL rape you!
You're missing the point. The point is - IT IS WRONG to bury technology.
Had Uncle marketed his product on his own, and he only ever sold 5000 units of product, and ultimately went bankrupt, then your observation/statement would make sense. But, then, his patent would eventually expire, and some other guy with better business sense could give it a go. Or, some other guy could have just licensed the patent from Uncle, and tried to market the same or a modified product.
Instead - GM buried the technology in their archives, and it's basically lost technology.
The patent system was broken a lot further back than a couple decades. As far back as the late '60's and '70's, the automotive industry was buying up patents, primarily to prevent competing innovations ever making it to market.
I heard stories about that, as a youngster. I really didn't put much stock in them, until I met my first wife's uncle. The old man had patented some modification to carburetors, which drastically increased fuel mileage. A typical Chevrolet Impala with a 350 engine could be coaxed into going 16, 20, maybe 24 miles per gallon. In a rare instance or two, the old man got around 30 mpg.
He sold that patent to General Motors, and his idea was basically lost.
I drove one of the cars he modified. It didn't have a lot of power, but it did get a little over 20 mpg.
My point is - the day the first patent was bought up by a competitor, for the sake of burying the technology, is the day that the patent system broke. Someone, somewhere, should have made note of that fact, and initiated changes to the law. Burying and/or monopolizing technology cannot be good for any society, culture, or civilization.
It isn't exactly ironic. It would be ironic if I really believed that the Antivirus people were interested in keeping my machine infection free, and running properly. But, I think that most real techs know better. Their interest, like most corporate interests, is money. They make money by tricking you into feeling secure, then coming back to them when you have a problem for more "solutions".
My "security solution" was to dump Windows. There actually are some less drastic solutions, but they are harder to implement.
_4rp4n3t gives good advice. Or, if you just have to use Google services and products, you could install a custom HOSTS file, and configure the browser with a few addons, such as Adblock Plus, and Ghostery.
Google is going to track you, to some extent, because they are all-pervasive on the internet. But, you CAN use their products, and still throw a monkey wrench into the works!
Funny that you hold out those inbred tribals as an example, supposedly better than my fictional characters. Royalty was just as inbred and self serving as the reddest of rednecks, or the inbred tribals in Afghanistan, Africa, or anyplace else. Inbreeding does that, you know.
Would you rather I held out some of our real life examples, instead? Farragut, Halsey, John Paul Jones, Daniel Joseph Daly, and my dad. I mean, WTF? Let's take Daly as our prime example. "Do you want to live forever?" People today would quiver in their sandals and shorts, and answer, "Well, yeah, DUHHH!" The men of yesteryear followed Daly into hell - and some of them lived to tell the story.
To tell you the honest to God truth, I'm not sure that I'm man enough to have followed Daly where he went - but I know for sure that I would have followed Farragut and the others.
Anyway - back to my original point. Here, in the US and Europe, we have decadence, or, as the OP would have it, "gentler times". The rest of the world? We don't read about much gentleness in Africa, the Mideast, south Asia, or the islands in the Pacific.
I remember those days. You don't mention, but I went through school in a relatively wealthy school system. The high school had a pretty decent chemistry lab, a biology lab, ELECTRIC typewriters in the typing class, 4 cars in the driver's education class, an Olympic swimming pool, all the gear required for any gymnast - quite a wealthy school system in those days. And, not one air conditioner, in any of the schools.
The state I live in today has air conditioning in every school, and every room in the schools - but there isn't a school within a hundred miles of me that has a chemistry lab, a swimming pool of any size, or a gymnasium worthy of the name.
No wonder we are raising so many little sissy wimps these days. *sigh*
"Gentler times"? That's an interesting concept. Look around the world. Are people really gentler, or have we become to decadent to defend that which is ours? I could throw a number of other descriptive terms out there, like gay, but what's the point? Today's young men are not the men of yesterday. Remember the LOTR scene, when the king is dying on the battle field? "I go to join the ranks of my forefathers", while the beautiful warrior maiden cries. Today's little gayboys wouldn't be fit to serve as water boys for their forefathers.
Whoa! The sale of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Libertarian moves? Which alternative reality have you flown in from? Libertarians have about as much say in US government as the Communist party does - almost zero. That move was mostly a Republican thing, with consent given by Democrats.
You would do well to scroll up to BetterUnixthanUnix' post. Libertarians stand against much of what is going on in America, including that ridiculous "War on Drugs". But, it doesn''t matter what the libertarians want, because there are at least 300 idiot Republicans, and another 300 moron Democrats for every single Libertarian.
It's not a recent development that the telco's are raping customers. Nor is it some kind of recently released secret, dug out by a heroic investigative team. Gotta have a phone? Get a prepaid phone, with no contract, reasonable fees, and limited use. THAT is how you tell the Telcos to go get stuffed!
The people who are signing contracts with the telcos today pretty much deserve to be raped. The facts are out there. Ignore them at your own risk.
I curse Intel routinely, and I do my share of cursing at ATI's decision not to support older GPU's on modern OS's. Others, meanwhile, have argued opposite positions - some of them using pretty good arguments. You should search slashdot for conversations on both subjects.
Which government funded Newton? Or Curie? I could go on, but I think you get the point that government funding is a pretty recent development. I suspect that most funding in times past came by way of philanthropists, or the universities, or the researcher him/herself. Unless, of course, the researcher had a rich daddy.
" Without Apollo, there wouldn't have been a SpaceX."
"I stand on the shoulders of giants."
Many of the world's greatest men and women have subscribed to that idea. Whether they be in medicine/medical fields, aviation, cultural arts, or whatever, they realize that they couldn't be where they are, without all the giants who created their specialized playing fields.
I think that Arthur, Isaac, and Ben might disagree with you. Isaac has written reams and reams of crap, that amounted to daydreaming. (entirely aside from his stories, in the form of forewords, afterwords, personal correspondence, etc) If Isaac's writings could be summarized, it would be something to the effect, "I can't imagine what you kids will discover in the next 100 or 1000 years - but get out there and discover it!"
Besides - the authors you mention have discovered little if anything in their stories. Sci-Fi has always been so much day dreaming. "What if?" has always been the question, and the answers change with time. Isaac gave up on the idea of a positronic brain, and advanced another line of thought regarding robot brains. Over the years, he learned enough about his theories, that he realized his original idea would never work out. One of the benefits of being both a real scientist, and a science fiction writer!
And, did he also use his own computer, probably running Windows, which keeps logs of contacts? Or, did he use a LiveCD, do his dirty deeds, then shut down the computer?
I know for certain that if I were to do something like this, I would NOT use an installed operating system, and I would MOST CERTAINLY not use a Windows system! Not even from a public computer, from a library, or senior citizen's center!
There's really no such thing as "lower end market". That's like saying that some consumers demand automobiles that will only go 35 mph, so we've got to produce autos to meet their needs. Find me the person, or people, who actually demand a low-end CPU, and I'll show you a person, or people, who really want (if not need) a high end CPU, but can't afford to pay the price being demanded.
As has been pointed out several times, it would cost Intel nothing to enable those missing features. In fact, they would save a little bit if they didn't spend the time (manpower) to disable features! They would gain a lot of public relations, though.
Which features, exactly? I've never had to pay a premium price for virtual machine support. The only thing I've seen is underclocking - which can be reversed, if you're smart enough to visit an overclocker's forum. And, you've already point out that running an underclocked CPU adds considerable life expectancy.
I won't bitch excessively about clock speeds - but I will most certainly bitch about the missing "features" that Intel feels they should be paid extra for.
PS3? I never walked into that obvious trap. Before Sony did away with Linux support (or "otherOS") PS3 looked like a decent bargain - but that didn't last long, did it?
You're partly right. It costs the same to manufacture a fast chip, with all features enabled, as it costs to make that slower, crippled chip.
The admission inherent in the article is, "We've been ripping you off all these years, but suddenly, we find it necessary for public relations purposes to enable the features that you've paid for!"
This is why I've not paid for an Intel CPU since the original Pentium processors. I feel that their business model is dishonest.
Agreed - I generally find my answers on the first page of a Google search.
But, I can't get past the definition for "success" in the summary. There are times when I Google something, and the answer appears in the summary - no need to click any links.
If you're measuring "success" in terms of dollars and cents changing hands somewhere, yeah, Bing is probably a success. If you're measuring "success" in terms of searchers finding the data they are looking for, I'll put my money on Google.
And would a revolution even change anything, if most citizens' eyes just glaze over on any topic like this?
That is the question I've asked myself many times. Look around the world, where revolutions have taken place. I like Latin America and the Banana Republics, as an example. They have a revolution, then two years later, another, then 5 years later, yet another. No one learns, no one cares, and nothing changes, nothing improves. Injustices are never addressed, no wrongs are ever righted.
Would I take up arms? As a veteran, I can most definitely say that "Yes, I would bear arms in defense of my country, and my constitution!" But, I look around, and ask, "Why?" The sheep are content, after all. They seem to be happy with the parasites.
No, you seem to have missed the point completely. The other side of the road CHARGES you for using their stuff. "I've got some great software, but you have to pay me if you want to use it, and you can never look at how it works!"
On my side of the road, it's more like, "I've got some stuff that works sometimes, for what I want to do. You can use it, or you can improve on it, or whatever you like. But, be warned, it's just a hack to make things work the way I like."
Do you still fail to see the difference? Proprietary software CHARGES, while Open Source does not. Regulation is for business, not for hobbyists.
You would expect - and without doing any research whatsoever, you end up the loser.
As an exercise, why don't you choose some news topic, and go read about that topic on various sites around the world. Start with Al Jazeera, maybe, then hit the BBC, then Faux Noise, hit a couple of those worthless liberal rags in the US, click on CSM, then the Hong Kong Standard, and throw in a few of your own favorites from random countries.
The results of this little exercise may very well surprise you!
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhhh - what good would Viagra do government? I can't tell that anyone in Washington actually has any balls, so they are likely lacking the other parts of the male reproductive tool . . .
This is the most "correct" answer to the question, even though the question was poorly shaped.
Judges tend to escalate the penalties for repeat offenders. Get your first DWI, the judge is going to slap your fingers, and let you grovel and plead your way out of serious penalties. The second time, he'll allow you to grovel, then whap your peepee. (Cheech and Chong reference, for you youngsters) Third offense, he's going to lock your ass up, give you a hefty fine, take your license, and give you some community service, as a minimum. And, he'll warn you NOT to come back and see him again, because he WILL rape you!
The USPTO only hires examiners with degrees in a hard science or engineering. Many have CS or CompE degrees.
So - they could hire starlets from the porn industry? Hmmmm - things couldn't get any worse, let's try it!
You're missing the point. The point is - IT IS WRONG to bury technology.
Had Uncle marketed his product on his own, and he only ever sold 5000 units of product, and ultimately went bankrupt, then your observation/statement would make sense. But, then, his patent would eventually expire, and some other guy with better business sense could give it a go. Or, some other guy could have just licensed the patent from Uncle, and tried to market the same or a modified product.
Instead - GM buried the technology in their archives, and it's basically lost technology.
It's wrong.
The patent system was broken a lot further back than a couple decades. As far back as the late '60's and '70's, the automotive industry was buying up patents, primarily to prevent competing innovations ever making it to market.
I heard stories about that, as a youngster. I really didn't put much stock in them, until I met my first wife's uncle. The old man had patented some modification to carburetors, which drastically increased fuel mileage. A typical Chevrolet Impala with a 350 engine could be coaxed into going 16, 20, maybe 24 miles per gallon. In a rare instance or two, the old man got around 30 mpg.
He sold that patent to General Motors, and his idea was basically lost.
I drove one of the cars he modified. It didn't have a lot of power, but it did get a little over 20 mpg.
My point is - the day the first patent was bought up by a competitor, for the sake of burying the technology, is the day that the patent system broke. Someone, somewhere, should have made note of that fact, and initiated changes to the law. Burying and/or monopolizing technology cannot be good for any society, culture, or civilization.
It isn't exactly ironic. It would be ironic if I really believed that the Antivirus people were interested in keeping my machine infection free, and running properly. But, I think that most real techs know better. Their interest, like most corporate interests, is money. They make money by tricking you into feeling secure, then coming back to them when you have a problem for more "solutions".
My "security solution" was to dump Windows. There actually are some less drastic solutions, but they are harder to implement.
_4rp4n3t gives good advice. Or, if you just have to use Google services and products, you could install a custom HOSTS file, and configure the browser with a few addons, such as Adblock Plus, and Ghostery.
Google is going to track you, to some extent, because they are all-pervasive on the internet. But, you CAN use their products, and still throw a monkey wrench into the works!
Funny that you hold out those inbred tribals as an example, supposedly better than my fictional characters. Royalty was just as inbred and self serving as the reddest of rednecks, or the inbred tribals in Afghanistan, Africa, or anyplace else. Inbreeding does that, you know.
Would you rather I held out some of our real life examples, instead? Farragut, Halsey, John Paul Jones, Daniel Joseph Daly, and my dad. I mean, WTF? Let's take Daly as our prime example. "Do you want to live forever?" People today would quiver in their sandals and shorts, and answer, "Well, yeah, DUHHH!" The men of yesteryear followed Daly into hell - and some of them lived to tell the story.
To tell you the honest to God truth, I'm not sure that I'm man enough to have followed Daly where he went - but I know for sure that I would have followed Farragut and the others.
Anyway - back to my original point. Here, in the US and Europe, we have decadence, or, as the OP would have it, "gentler times". The rest of the world? We don't read about much gentleness in Africa, the Mideast, south Asia, or the islands in the Pacific.
I remember those days. You don't mention, but I went through school in a relatively wealthy school system. The high school had a pretty decent chemistry lab, a biology lab, ELECTRIC typewriters in the typing class, 4 cars in the driver's education class, an Olympic swimming pool, all the gear required for any gymnast - quite a wealthy school system in those days. And, not one air conditioner, in any of the schools.
The state I live in today has air conditioning in every school, and every room in the schools - but there isn't a school within a hundred miles of me that has a chemistry lab, a swimming pool of any size, or a gymnasium worthy of the name.
No wonder we are raising so many little sissy wimps these days. *sigh*
"Gentler times"? That's an interesting concept. Look around the world. Are people really gentler, or have we become to decadent to defend that which is ours? I could throw a number of other descriptive terms out there, like gay, but what's the point? Today's young men are not the men of yesterday. Remember the LOTR scene, when the king is dying on the battle field? "I go to join the ranks of my forefathers", while the beautiful warrior maiden cries. Today's little gayboys wouldn't be fit to serve as water boys for their forefathers.
Whoa! The sale of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Libertarian moves? Which alternative reality have you flown in from? Libertarians have about as much say in US government as the Communist party does - almost zero. That move was mostly a Republican thing, with consent given by Democrats.
You would do well to scroll up to BetterUnixthanUnix' post. Libertarians stand against much of what is going on in America, including that ridiculous "War on Drugs". But, it doesn''t matter what the libertarians want, because there are at least 300 idiot Republicans, and another 300 moron Democrats for every single Libertarian.
DON'T SIGN THE FRIGGING CONTRACT!!!
It's not a recent development that the telco's are raping customers. Nor is it some kind of recently released secret, dug out by a heroic investigative team. Gotta have a phone? Get a prepaid phone, with no contract, reasonable fees, and limited use. THAT is how you tell the Telcos to go get stuffed!
The people who are signing contracts with the telcos today pretty much deserve to be raped. The facts are out there. Ignore them at your own risk.
I curse Intel routinely, and I do my share of cursing at ATI's decision not to support older GPU's on modern OS's. Others, meanwhile, have argued opposite positions - some of them using pretty good arguments. You should search slashdot for conversations on both subjects.
Which government funded Newton? Or Curie? I could go on, but I think you get the point that government funding is a pretty recent development. I suspect that most funding in times past came by way of philanthropists, or the universities, or the researcher him/herself. Unless, of course, the researcher had a rich daddy.
" Without Apollo, there wouldn't have been a SpaceX."
"I stand on the shoulders of giants."
Many of the world's greatest men and women have subscribed to that idea. Whether they be in medicine/medical fields, aviation, cultural arts, or whatever, they realize that they couldn't be where they are, without all the giants who created their specialized playing fields.
I think that Arthur, Isaac, and Ben might disagree with you. Isaac has written reams and reams of crap, that amounted to daydreaming. (entirely aside from his stories, in the form of forewords, afterwords, personal correspondence, etc) If Isaac's writings could be summarized, it would be something to the effect, "I can't imagine what you kids will discover in the next 100 or 1000 years - but get out there and discover it!"
Besides - the authors you mention have discovered little if anything in their stories. Sci-Fi has always been so much day dreaming. "What if?" has always been the question, and the answers change with time. Isaac gave up on the idea of a positronic brain, and advanced another line of thought regarding robot brains. Over the years, he learned enough about his theories, that he realized his original idea would never work out. One of the benefits of being both a real scientist, and a science fiction writer!
And, did he also use his own computer, probably running Windows, which keeps logs of contacts? Or, did he use a LiveCD, do his dirty deeds, then shut down the computer?
I know for certain that if I were to do something like this, I would NOT use an installed operating system, and I would MOST CERTAINLY not use a Windows system! Not even from a public computer, from a library, or senior citizen's center!
There's really no such thing as "lower end market". That's like saying that some consumers demand automobiles that will only go 35 mph, so we've got to produce autos to meet their needs. Find me the person, or people, who actually demand a low-end CPU, and I'll show you a person, or people, who really want (if not need) a high end CPU, but can't afford to pay the price being demanded.
As has been pointed out several times, it would cost Intel nothing to enable those missing features. In fact, they would save a little bit if they didn't spend the time (manpower) to disable features! They would gain a lot of public relations, though.
Which features, exactly? I've never had to pay a premium price for virtual machine support. The only thing I've seen is underclocking - which can be reversed, if you're smart enough to visit an overclocker's forum. And, you've already point out that running an underclocked CPU adds considerable life expectancy.
I won't bitch excessively about clock speeds - but I will most certainly bitch about the missing "features" that Intel feels they should be paid extra for.
PS3? I never walked into that obvious trap. Before Sony did away with Linux support (or "otherOS") PS3 looked like a decent bargain - but that didn't last long, did it?
You're partly right. It costs the same to manufacture a fast chip, with all features enabled, as it costs to make that slower, crippled chip.
The admission inherent in the article is, "We've been ripping you off all these years, but suddenly, we find it necessary for public relations purposes to enable the features that you've paid for!"
This is why I've not paid for an Intel CPU since the original Pentium processors. I feel that their business model is dishonest.
The real question here is, 'How much did Microsoft pay for this predetermined study to be completed?'
Agreed - I generally find my answers on the first page of a Google search.
But, I can't get past the definition for "success" in the summary. There are times when I Google something, and the answer appears in the summary - no need to click any links.
If you're measuring "success" in terms of dollars and cents changing hands somewhere, yeah, Bing is probably a success. If you're measuring "success" in terms of searchers finding the data they are looking for, I'll put my money on Google.
And would a revolution even change anything, if most citizens' eyes just glaze over on any topic like this?
That is the question I've asked myself many times. Look around the world, where revolutions have taken place. I like Latin America and the Banana Republics, as an example. They have a revolution, then two years later, another, then 5 years later, yet another. No one learns, no one cares, and nothing changes, nothing improves. Injustices are never addressed, no wrongs are ever righted.
Would I take up arms? As a veteran, I can most definitely say that "Yes, I would bear arms in defense of my country, and my constitution!" But, I look around, and ask, "Why?" The sheep are content, after all. They seem to be happy with the parasites.
No, you seem to have missed the point completely. The other side of the road CHARGES you for using their stuff. "I've got some great software, but you have to pay me if you want to use it, and you can never look at how it works!"
On my side of the road, it's more like, "I've got some stuff that works sometimes, for what I want to do. You can use it, or you can improve on it, or whatever you like. But, be warned, it's just a hack to make things work the way I like."
Do you still fail to see the difference? Proprietary software CHARGES, while Open Source does not. Regulation is for business, not for hobbyists.
You would expect - and without doing any research whatsoever, you end up the loser.
As an exercise, why don't you choose some news topic, and go read about that topic on various sites around the world. Start with Al Jazeera, maybe, then hit the BBC, then Faux Noise, hit a couple of those worthless liberal rags in the US, click on CSM, then the Hong Kong Standard, and throw in a few of your own favorites from random countries.
The results of this little exercise may very well surprise you!