Yeah. It won't be remote controlled robots, that's for sure.
In general, we have a defeatist attitude regarding space exploration. I want to see people on the moon before I die. Even if it's only a VERY small colony with a dozen scientists and techs, with support personnel, it's a start. I want to hear plans for a Mars colony. Putting colonies in space will help to prevent the extermination of mankind due to a single cataclysmic event.
A few people have died exploring space, and we whine and cower, afraid to put people out there.
One single asteroid can kill us all. Robotics are all fine and dandy, but we need to move into space for the good of mankind.
I hope the next scheme is easier for people with bad eyes. I often have to call the wife or one of my sons to solve a captcha puzzle. The black/white/grey are bad enough - when they combine colors, I'm freaking LOST!! If I'm home alone, I just give up after a couple failed attempts. Good thing my bank doesn't use this scheme, huh?
"However, one of the more controversial moves being actively debated"
Settle this controversy: is it more important that mindless boobies have convenient access to system resources, or is it more important to be secure?
That settled, there is little controversy left. Maybe some squabbling over WHICH VERSION of Linux you should migrate to, that would be about it.
Assuming that Tibetans are literate, there should be little difficulty in customising your own fonts, and other requirements.
So, get cracking, customise Linux to your needs, and quit whining about Bill Gates inbuilt insecurities. If Tibetans aren't capable and literate enough, they can always borrow from http://redflag-linux.com.cn/en/index.php
Mother of democracies? Hmmmmm. Perhaps I've been mistaken about England. I always thought England was a monarchy, that had spread an empire around the world by force of arms. Liberties, rights, and democratic freedoms have been wrested FROM that monarchy by force of arms. Maybe I should google the Magna Charta again, and see how that really went down. Yes, I see. The King decided that it would be a good thing for his subjects to exercise some freedoms, and to be secure in thier persons, so he unilaterally offered the terms of the Magna Charta to his subjects, despite everything his advisors counseled.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)
Real safety is teaching your wife or daughter to protect herself. Protecting herself is a multi-stage process: Knowing where she is, and the dangers present, knowing the people around her, learning self defense, being willing to use deadly force to protect herself - basically, being able and willing to defend herself.
If your DNA is incapable of protecting itself, why should society be burdened with doing so? You should have married a tomboy who could kick your ass all over the street to ensure that your children would survive.
"2. Jury contamination. Extensive media coverage makes it nearly impossible for the jury to act based on the narrow parameters for which they are assembled; "
I believe that this is part of the problem with the legal system in general, and it is part of the problem with copyright law specifically. Judges and juries are called on to decide some narrow parameter of law, then RIAA and company turn around and apply that narrow parameter to anything and everything that remotely resembles the original case.
Government does us no favors when they look at one small aspect of a set of laws, and makes decisions in which they are blind to the broader implications.
Copyright law has been corrupted, abused, and subverted by rich bastids with money to waste. That is the big picture. Judges and juries need to be able to see that big picture, and decide cases within the scope of copyright law.
Why is this not possible? Streaming media of the proceedings may or may not be wise, I'm not addressing that with this post. My problem is with those "narrow parameters".
Picture a college kid who has checked his composition a dozen times to be sure he has crossed his t's, dotted his i's, but gets a failing grade because the composition just sucks.
That is exactly how I see our legal system, today.
Some moron did the article. A moron who has never been to sea, obviously.
I challenge any weekend warrior to find me any cargo ships that make 26 knots, anywhere, today, last year, or last decade. In an emergency, a FEW of them might make that kind of speed, but they can't sustain it day after day, like naval ships can. A blown boiler is sure to ruin anyone's day.
Warships didn't even make a habit of running that fast, 30 years ago, when fuel was cheap. The first time I crossed the Atlantic, I asked "How long?" like any kid in the back seat of a car, on a long trip.
The answer: "We can be in Portugal in 5 days, if we burn x gallons per minute, or we can be there in 11 days, if we burn y gallons per minute. So, we'll be there in 11 days."
The destroyer I served on was capable of doing about 35 knots (officialy 30+) and we could catch ANY commercial freighter, tanker, container ship, or whatever.
IF, and I say IF, cargo ships were capable of 26 knots as the article says, THEN, they would be transiting the hi danger piracy zones at that speed, and the pirates wouldn't be catching them.
Many 19th century sailing ships could routinely take most commercial traffic in a race, even BEFORE companies started slowing down to conserve fuel. Revisit the sailing times for ships such as the Cutty Sark, then look at the sailing times for today's tankers and container ships. Real sailing times, not "best case scenario with favorable winds" sailing times.;)
It stands to reason that a lot of slashdotters are from California. Sillycone Valley, and all of that. And, Gay Bay people are included in that membership. Yeah, I'll be modded down as well. Maybe I need to add to my sig.
Being stupid is probably genetically related. Linking peter puffing to genetics is just a frigging THEORY. You can't take a DNA sample, and decide that some dude is queer. I can take a DNA sample and figure out that you are an inbred moron.
I'm pretty sure that there are laws against industrial espionage. "Spying" is a sort of general, while industrial espionage is more specific. Describing the above offense as "spying" is fairly accurate.
The person who committed the crime is obviously liable. The people who payed him for the information are only slightly less obviously liable.
And, oh yeah. There are a myriad of conspiracy laws on the books. Everyone involved in stealing the information obviously conspired to perform the act, and to pay for the information.
While the espionage charges are pretty serious, it must be pointed out that the conspiracy is FAR MORE serious. Ask any judge, lawyer, legal advisor, or even a cop.
An INTELLIGENT prosecutor can put some people into prison over this, with some pretty serious sentencing time.
In extreme cases, it totally screws up the economy. The very best armor becomes so expensive that a new player will never afford it without resorting the some measure that violates the TOS/rules of the game.
In other cases, the developers are just being dicks. They have a narrow view of how the game should be played, and anyone who sees beyond that view is guilty of "exploiting" the game.
In the case of Runescape, they CLAIM that all the gold making drones were located in China, and that the drones were employed by the Chinese government, to benefit that government. The drones made almost nothing, while the government reaped millions of dollars, all at Jazex' expense.
Without access to Jagex' logs, I can't call them liars, but, there are things that I don't much like about them.
The fact is, they have a new chief, and some past decisions are being changed. For better or worse, it's hard to say right now.
Me neither. One of the kids asked me about getting an account. He tried to explain the system. All I could think was, "How freaking GAY!" Myspace all over again, right?
Journalists are learning that listening to people might be newsworthy. Or, at the least, indicate where the news might be.
I can handle censors editing out the most obscene language. I might handle censors deleting or editing calls for unlawful actions. I can even handle censorship of the most obscene pornographic material on a public forum.
Otherwise, unmoderated forums are a valuable tool to society, the journalists themselves, and even to government. Anonymous posts have been acceptable since the days when we revolted against England.
And, the Post is just figuring that out?
Now, if they would just improve the format of their stupid page, they might be worth reading.
From personal experience, very few octogenarians understand diddly about computers. From personal experience with technical support, I would say that a lot of octogenarians take on part time jobs as an ISP's support personnel. While I don't approve of "discrimination" based on age, let's be realistic. Older people are NOT as technically savvy as younger people. Example? I'm 52, my youngest kid is 17. What I have to study, he absorbs by osmosis. He has left me eating his dust with technological gadgetry. He owns stuff that I simply have no interest in, and I will NEVER LEARN how to work it. Do you think I would feel at ease, if my MOTHER IN LAW were in charge of the election machines? No way on earth.
I'll accept this amended statement as being pretty accurate. Though, I say it takes more than 5 minutes. I've just set up WinXP in a virtual machine, to my liking, and it took more than 5 minutes to browse through my cached installation files, and install Firefox, SpywareBlaster, and Spybot, then to add the Firefox extensions I consider "necessary".
I will also point out that some games commonly found on Windows require administrative rights. Exactly why this is so is beyond my ability to explain - but the fault lies with BOTH game developers, and Microsoft. MS should NEVER have permitted developers to set hooks, and all the other wild things that trivial applications like games do. There are other less trivial applications that do wild things with the hardware and low level processes.
So, we have a less than perfect system, burdened by lame-ass developer decisions, aggravated by uninformed users who keep all their personal data on the computer......
Personally, I'd rather have my less than perfect Linux, free of lame ass developer's decisions, and generally operated by informed individuals. And, even so, I don't keep banking data and other important stuff on my machine, lol
I'm not paranoid, I'm just aware that SOME PEOPLE REALLY ARE OUT TO GET ME!! (conficker, anyone?)
Maybe I overstressed the importance of science - but not a great deal. The story can be populated by almost anyone. Yes, there have to be people, or there would be no story. (If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?) Developing a character may be important to get the story, but the soaps don't develop a character any more than the most mindless action movies do. I mean, the wife plays her soaps every day, and I can't even BEGIN to relate to ANY of those -uhh- "characters".
Try this - visualise 2001 with some punk kid who stowed away on the ship as the hero, instead of Dave. Dave was just an expendable tech who helped get the ship going in the right direction, so he can die off any time. The punk stowaway can finish the story quite well for us. In fact, he has potential that Dave didn't, if you think about it.
Whatever, if half the movie focuses on people making eyes at each other, it certainly IS NOT sci-fi. One or more of those people may have gorgeous eyes, but damn, I can look at the wife for gorgeous eyes.;)
Except now Windows is as secure, easier to install, has more products, and behaves 'smother' then Linux.
Is as secure? Uhhhhh - you'll have to offer more than a "take my word" statement to that effect. Windows what, is as secure as what, exactly? You are hoping that Win7 is as secure as SEL?
Ahem. You'll excuse me if I wait for a LOT of people to start saying so? Experience teaches us that every time Microsoft enhances their security, first, people defeat that security on their own machines, then the crackers defeat that security from the outside.
As things stand right now, I'm simply not believing that a default installation of ANY Windows system is as secure as a default installation of ANY Linux. Or, Mac for that matter. Win2003 is the most secure MS operating system I have any experience with, and it doesn't even stack up to a default Ubuntu install, IMHO
Let's turn your little "challenge" around. You tell us why you think Win7 is so very secure, alright?
You should be aware that I actually like Win7 - it really is an improvement on everything I've seen before. But making claims that it is as secure as Linux seems pretty ridiculous.
Uhhhh - actually, the "science" part is the real "meat" of any "science fiction" story. The people are peripheral, and expendable. Reversing those roles results in "space opera", which is far inferior to genuine science fiction. To put that into perspective, all of the apocalypse movies labeled as science fiction offer no science at all - instead, they are studies in man's inhumanity to man, and how sick and perverse men can really be. A real sci-fi movie, like 2010, is about WHAT IS OUT THERE. Any person could have played the roles, from a child to an ancient old philosopher, to an engineer, to some thrill seeking teen. The STORY was about the universe, more than how we fit into it. God, I hate it when they write stories and make movies that have nothing to do with science, then label it sci-fi. Worse, I hate when they strip the science, and leave a bunch of looney tunes who make eyes, and participate in a tremendous ego stroking circle jerk. "Days of our lives" has as much science as most of those space opera abortions.
Uhhh, shaving is for those people who possess vaginas. Real men don't fuck with little baby blades, aloe strips, and shit like that. Let the facial hair grow. It's in your genes. Buncha metrosexual candy asses. Or, are they homosexual candy asses? It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Ahhh - but - it seems that you miss the underlying premise. Baen reacted to, and adapted to, the existing market. Such actions reap profits. (accurately anticipating, and adapting to the FUTURE market would be even more lucrative, of course) Those who are so strongly opposed to P2P and other technologies are resisting market change, and refusing to adapt. Such opposition fails to reap rewards. Worse, if they resist long enough and hard enough, they will find themselves bankrupted, and cast off from the mainstream.
It is the customer who ultimately decides how successful a company is, after all.
If and/or when the day comes that Baen can't make money off of the printed page, they WILL adapt. They have already proven that they are adaptable.
A shame that Jim Baen himself won't be there to guide the company along, but he obviously set the example for his replacements.
Perhaps I am missing something blatantly obvious here. Google isn't putting "content" per se onto Google pages, right? Instead, they are indexing and creating links to the content. To view more than a vague snippet of the actual content, I have to clicky the linky, and visit the newspaper's site.
I wonder - maybe Google should STOP INDEXING news,, period. Just stop, cold turkey. No more news feeds from ANY of the major papers.
How long would it take before the newspapers approached Google, with an offer to PAY GOOGLE to restart the news indexing?
Face it - almost everyone reads news that they wouldn't have read, simply BECAUSE the snippet offered by Google made us curious.
When did Dumb and Dumber get into the newspaper publishing business, anyway?
We are already at war with China. They declared war years ago, and we ignored them. Assasin's Mace was the declaration.
Guess what? They are winning. Technology is being exported to China routinely. Jobs are being exported. Infrastructure (ie, plant and equipment) is being exported. The dollar loses value, the yen goes up, and China is calling today for the world's money exchange to be based on something OTHER THAN the dollar.
Sun Tzu was Chinese, after all. The Chinese haven't forgotten him. They are indeed waging assymetrical, unconventional war on the United States.
And, unless we wake up, they will win, WITHOUT any nuclear warheads exchanged.
Wake up, and smell the roses, my freind.
There are, today, sophisticated, sustained, well-coordinated hacking attacks on governments around the world, originating in China. Yes, hackers are contributing to their war effort. Don't doubt that for a moment.
Jim put his money where his mouth was, and GAVE AWAY book, after book, after book. More, if you happen to be disabled, you can contact Baen Books, and they will give to you NOT ONLY the books from their free library, but their mainstream books that are in print.
Baen books had a lot of money at stake on this gamble. But, they PROVED CONCLUSIVELY that giving stuff away free MAKES MONEY for them. Every time they released a title that had been out of print, sales of that book skyrocketed.
Over at Baen, the author has to approve his title for the free library, and some authors don't seem to use it. Those authors who have jumped aboard the free library enjoy an increase in income.
Baen books puts the lie to all the DRM crap, and proves the corporate lackeys to be totally wrong.
In the case of D&D stuff - if they had any brights at all, they would allow the stuff on P2P to continue, but add some cool stuff that is NOT readily downloadable via P2P. Any intelligent individual can come up with schemes for that. In fact, it would be a small step to release P2P ready material that at the very least promotes the non-P2P, and possibly even DEPENDS ON other non-P2P material.
It constantly amazes me that lackwit idiots run the corporate world.
Traveling salesmen and tinkers learned this lesson before electricity was discovered, for God's sake!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. It won't be remote controlled robots, that's for sure.
In general, we have a defeatist attitude regarding space exploration. I want to see people on the moon before I die. Even if it's only a VERY small colony with a dozen scientists and techs, with support personnel, it's a start. I want to hear plans for a Mars colony. Putting colonies in space will help to prevent the extermination of mankind due to a single cataclysmic event.
A few people have died exploring space, and we whine and cower, afraid to put people out there.
One single asteroid can kill us all. Robotics are all fine and dandy, but we need to move into space for the good of mankind.
I hope the next scheme is easier for people with bad eyes. I often have to call the wife or one of my sons to solve a captcha puzzle. The black/white/grey are bad enough - when they combine colors, I'm freaking LOST!! If I'm home alone, I just give up after a couple failed attempts. Good thing my bank doesn't use this scheme, huh?
"However, one of the more controversial moves being actively debated"
Settle this controversy: is it more important that mindless boobies have convenient access to system resources, or is it more important to be secure?
That settled, there is little controversy left. Maybe some squabbling over WHICH VERSION of Linux you should migrate to, that would be about it.
Assuming that Tibetans are literate, there should be little difficulty in customising your own fonts, and other requirements.
So, get cracking, customise Linux to your needs, and quit whining about Bill Gates inbuilt insecurities. If Tibetans aren't capable and literate enough, they can always borrow from http://redflag-linux.com.cn/en/index.php
Mother of democracies? Hmmmmm. Perhaps I've been mistaken about England. I always thought England was a monarchy, that had spread an empire around the world by force of arms. Liberties, rights, and democratic freedoms have been wrested FROM that monarchy by force of arms. Maybe I should google the Magna Charta again, and see how that really went down. Yes, I see. The King decided that it would be a good thing for his subjects to exercise some freedoms, and to be secure in thier persons, so he unilaterally offered the terms of the Magna Charta to his subjects, despite everything his advisors counseled.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)
Real safety is teaching your wife or daughter to protect herself. Protecting herself is a multi-stage process: Knowing where she is, and the dangers present, knowing the people around her, learning self defense, being willing to use deadly force to protect herself - basically, being able and willing to defend herself.
If your DNA is incapable of protecting itself, why should society be burdened with doing so? You should have married a tomboy who could kick your ass all over the street to ensure that your children would survive.
"2. Jury contamination. Extensive media coverage makes it nearly impossible for the jury to act based on the narrow parameters for which they are assembled; "
I believe that this is part of the problem with the legal system in general, and it is part of the problem with copyright law specifically. Judges and juries are called on to decide some narrow parameter of law, then RIAA and company turn around and apply that narrow parameter to anything and everything that remotely resembles the original case.
Government does us no favors when they look at one small aspect of a set of laws, and makes decisions in which they are blind to the broader implications.
Copyright law has been corrupted, abused, and subverted by rich bastids with money to waste. That is the big picture. Judges and juries need to be able to see that big picture, and decide cases within the scope of copyright law.
Why is this not possible? Streaming media of the proceedings may or may not be wise, I'm not addressing that with this post. My problem is with those "narrow parameters".
Picture a college kid who has checked his composition a dozen times to be sure he has crossed his t's, dotted his i's, but gets a failing grade because the composition just sucks.
That is exactly how I see our legal system, today.
Some moron did the article. A moron who has never been to sea, obviously.
I challenge any weekend warrior to find me any cargo ships that make 26 knots, anywhere, today, last year, or last decade. In an emergency, a FEW of them might make that kind of speed, but they can't sustain it day after day, like naval ships can. A blown boiler is sure to ruin anyone's day.
Warships didn't even make a habit of running that fast, 30 years ago, when fuel was cheap. The first time I crossed the Atlantic, I asked "How long?" like any kid in the back seat of a car, on a long trip.
The answer: "We can be in Portugal in 5 days, if we burn x gallons per minute, or we can be there in 11 days, if we burn y gallons per minute. So, we'll be there in 11 days."
The destroyer I served on was capable of doing about 35 knots (officialy 30+) and we could catch ANY commercial freighter, tanker, container ship, or whatever.
IF, and I say IF, cargo ships were capable of 26 knots as the article says, THEN, they would be transiting the hi danger piracy zones at that speed, and the pirates wouldn't be catching them.
Many 19th century sailing ships could routinely take most commercial traffic in a race, even BEFORE companies started slowing down to conserve fuel. Revisit the sailing times for ships such as the Cutty Sark, then look at the sailing times for today's tankers and container ships. Real sailing times, not "best case scenario with favorable winds" sailing times. ;)
It stands to reason that a lot of slashdotters are from California. Sillycone Valley, and all of that. And, Gay Bay people are included in that membership. Yeah, I'll be modded down as well. Maybe I need to add to my sig.
Being stupid is probably genetically related. Linking peter puffing to genetics is just a frigging THEORY. You can't take a DNA sample, and decide that some dude is queer. I can take a DNA sample and figure out that you are an inbred moron.
I'm pretty sure that there are laws against industrial espionage. "Spying" is a sort of general, while industrial espionage is more specific. Describing the above offense as "spying" is fairly accurate.
http://nsi.org/Library/Legis/bill1556.html
The person who committed the crime is obviously liable. The people who payed him for the information are only slightly less obviously liable.
And, oh yeah. There are a myriad of conspiracy laws on the books. Everyone involved in stealing the information obviously conspired to perform the act, and to pay for the information.
While the espionage charges are pretty serious, it must be pointed out that the conspiracy is FAR MORE serious. Ask any judge, lawyer, legal advisor, or even a cop.
An INTELLIGENT prosecutor can put some people into prison over this, with some pretty serious sentencing time.
In extreme cases, it totally screws up the economy. The very best armor becomes so expensive that a new player will never afford it without resorting the some measure that violates the TOS/rules of the game.
In other cases, the developers are just being dicks. They have a narrow view of how the game should be played, and anyone who sees beyond that view is guilty of "exploiting" the game.
In the case of Runescape, they CLAIM that all the gold making drones were located in China, and that the drones were employed by the Chinese government, to benefit that government. The drones made almost nothing, while the government reaped millions of dollars, all at Jazex' expense.
Without access to Jagex' logs, I can't call them liars, but, there are things that I don't much like about them.
The fact is, they have a new chief, and some past decisions are being changed. For better or worse, it's hard to say right now.
Me neither. One of the kids asked me about getting an account. He tried to explain the system. All I could think was, "How freaking GAY!" Myspace all over again, right?
Journalists are learning that listening to people might be newsworthy. Or, at the least, indicate where the news might be.
I can handle censors editing out the most obscene language. I might handle censors deleting or editing calls for unlawful actions. I can even handle censorship of the most obscene pornographic material on a public forum.
Otherwise, unmoderated forums are a valuable tool to society, the journalists themselves, and even to government. Anonymous posts have been acceptable since the days when we revolted against England.
And, the Post is just figuring that out?
Now, if they would just improve the format of their stupid page, they might be worth reading.
From personal experience, very few octogenarians understand diddly about computers. From personal experience with technical support, I would say that a lot of octogenarians take on part time jobs as an ISP's support personnel. While I don't approve of "discrimination" based on age, let's be realistic. Older people are NOT as technically savvy as younger people. Example? I'm 52, my youngest kid is 17. What I have to study, he absorbs by osmosis. He has left me eating his dust with technological gadgetry. He owns stuff that I simply have no interest in, and I will NEVER LEARN how to work it. Do you think I would feel at ease, if my MOTHER IN LAW were in charge of the election machines? No way on earth.
Me too.
Seems to be a lot of us, huh? Think we can take over the government?
THE UNITED STATES OF DAVID!!
I'll accept this amended statement as being pretty accurate. Though, I say it takes more than 5 minutes. I've just set up WinXP in a virtual machine, to my liking, and it took more than 5 minutes to browse through my cached installation files, and install Firefox, SpywareBlaster, and Spybot, then to add the Firefox extensions I consider "necessary".
I will also point out that some games commonly found on Windows require administrative rights. Exactly why this is so is beyond my ability to explain - but the fault lies with BOTH game developers, and Microsoft. MS should NEVER have permitted developers to set hooks, and all the other wild things that trivial applications like games do. There are other less trivial applications that do wild things with the hardware and low level processes.
So, we have a less than perfect system, burdened by lame-ass developer decisions, aggravated by uninformed users who keep all their personal data on the computer......
Personally, I'd rather have my less than perfect Linux, free of lame ass developer's decisions, and generally operated by informed individuals. And, even so, I don't keep banking data and other important stuff on my machine, lol
I'm not paranoid, I'm just aware that SOME PEOPLE REALLY ARE OUT TO GET ME!! (conficker, anyone?)
Maybe I overstressed the importance of science - but not a great deal. The story can be populated by almost anyone. Yes, there have to be people, or there would be no story. (If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?) Developing a character may be important to get the story, but the soaps don't develop a character any more than the most mindless action movies do. I mean, the wife plays her soaps every day, and I can't even BEGIN to relate to ANY of those -uhh- "characters".
Try this - visualise 2001 with some punk kid who stowed away on the ship as the hero, instead of Dave. Dave was just an expendable tech who helped get the ship going in the right direction, so he can die off any time. The punk stowaway can finish the story quite well for us. In fact, he has potential that Dave didn't, if you think about it.
Whatever, if half the movie focuses on people making eyes at each other, it certainly IS NOT sci-fi. One or more of those people may have gorgeous eyes, but damn, I can look at the wife for gorgeous eyes. ;)
Except now Windows is as secure, easier to install, has more products, and behaves 'smother' then Linux.
Is as secure? Uhhhhh - you'll have to offer more than a "take my word" statement to that effect. Windows what, is as secure as what, exactly? You are hoping that Win7 is as secure as SEL?
Ahem. You'll excuse me if I wait for a LOT of people to start saying so? Experience teaches us that every time Microsoft enhances their security, first, people defeat that security on their own machines, then the crackers defeat that security from the outside.
As things stand right now, I'm simply not believing that a default installation of ANY Windows system is as secure as a default installation of ANY Linux. Or, Mac for that matter. Win2003 is the most secure MS operating system I have any experience with, and it doesn't even stack up to a default Ubuntu install, IMHO
Let's turn your little "challenge" around. You tell us why you think Win7 is so very secure, alright?
You should be aware that I actually like Win7 - it really is an improvement on everything I've seen before. But making claims that it is as secure as Linux seems pretty ridiculous.
Uhhhh - actually, the "science" part is the real "meat" of any "science fiction" story. The people are peripheral, and expendable. Reversing those roles results in "space opera", which is far inferior to genuine science fiction. To put that into perspective, all of the apocalypse movies labeled as science fiction offer no science at all - instead, they are studies in man's inhumanity to man, and how sick and perverse men can really be. A real sci-fi movie, like 2010, is about WHAT IS OUT THERE. Any person could have played the roles, from a child to an ancient old philosopher, to an engineer, to some thrill seeking teen. The STORY was about the universe, more than how we fit into it. God, I hate it when they write stories and make movies that have nothing to do with science, then label it sci-fi. Worse, I hate when they strip the science, and leave a bunch of looney tunes who make eyes, and participate in a tremendous ego stroking circle jerk. "Days of our lives" has as much science as most of those space opera abortions.
Uhhh, shaving is for those people who possess vaginas. Real men don't fuck with little baby blades, aloe strips, and shit like that. Let the facial hair grow. It's in your genes. Buncha metrosexual candy asses. Or, are they homosexual candy asses? It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Ahhh - but - it seems that you miss the underlying premise. Baen reacted to, and adapted to, the existing market. Such actions reap profits. (accurately anticipating, and adapting to the FUTURE market would be even more lucrative, of course) Those who are so strongly opposed to P2P and other technologies are resisting market change, and refusing to adapt. Such opposition fails to reap rewards. Worse, if they resist long enough and hard enough, they will find themselves bankrupted, and cast off from the mainstream.
It is the customer who ultimately decides how successful a company is, after all.
If and/or when the day comes that Baen can't make money off of the printed page, they WILL adapt. They have already proven that they are adaptable.
A shame that Jim Baen himself won't be there to guide the company along, but he obviously set the example for his replacements.
Perhaps I am missing something blatantly obvious here. Google isn't putting "content" per se onto Google pages, right? Instead, they are indexing and creating links to the content. To view more than a vague snippet of the actual content, I have to clicky the linky, and visit the newspaper's site.
I wonder - maybe Google should STOP INDEXING news,, period. Just stop, cold turkey. No more news feeds from ANY of the major papers.
How long would it take before the newspapers approached Google, with an offer to PAY GOOGLE to restart the news indexing?
Face it - almost everyone reads news that they wouldn't have read, simply BECAUSE the snippet offered by Google made us curious.
When did Dumb and Dumber get into the newspaper publishing business, anyway?
We are already at war with China. They declared war years ago, and we ignored them. Assasin's Mace was the declaration.
Guess what? They are winning. Technology is being exported to China routinely. Jobs are being exported. Infrastructure (ie, plant and equipment) is being exported. The dollar loses value, the yen goes up, and China is calling today for the world's money exchange to be based on something OTHER THAN the dollar.
Sun Tzu was Chinese, after all. The Chinese haven't forgotten him. They are indeed waging assymetrical, unconventional war on the United States.
And, unless we wake up, they will win, WITHOUT any nuclear warheads exchanged.
Wake up, and smell the roses, my freind.
There are, today, sophisticated, sustained, well-coordinated hacking attacks on governments around the world, originating in China. Yes, hackers are contributing to their war effort. Don't doubt that for a moment.
Could this be considered a sign that there is failure approaching when a company starts resorting to litigation for income?
No - this is comfortable re-assurance that the status quo is maintained. TSR / WoTC / Hasbro hasn't been shy with litigation in the past.
comfortable .... reassurance .... status quo ....
Look around you, my freind. Read the news. The status isn't so quo as you seem to believe.
You've heard of Wall Street, and Washington, I presume?
I can't make an argument against this attitude that is anywhere near as eloquent as Eric Flint posted on Jim Baen's free library site.
http://www.baen.com/library/
Jim put his money where his mouth was, and GAVE AWAY book, after book, after book. More, if you happen to be disabled, you can contact Baen Books, and they will give to you NOT ONLY the books from their free library, but their mainstream books that are in print.
Baen books had a lot of money at stake on this gamble. But, they PROVED CONCLUSIVELY that giving stuff away free MAKES MONEY for them. Every time they released a title that had been out of print, sales of that book skyrocketed.
Over at Baen, the author has to approve his title for the free library, and some authors don't seem to use it. Those authors who have jumped aboard the free library enjoy an increase in income.
Baen books puts the lie to all the DRM crap, and proves the corporate lackeys to be totally wrong.
In the case of D&D stuff - if they had any brights at all, they would allow the stuff on P2P to continue, but add some cool stuff that is NOT readily downloadable via P2P. Any intelligent individual can come up with schemes for that. In fact, it would be a small step to release P2P ready material that at the very least promotes the non-P2P, and possibly even DEPENDS ON other non-P2P material.
It constantly amazes me that lackwit idiots run the corporate world.
Traveling salesmen and tinkers learned this lesson before electricity was discovered, for God's sake!!!