Then again, you should never trust what you hear on teh Intarweb. Just because this guy tells the story that way, doesn't mean that that's actually what happened, I'm sure Athena Diagnostics has a somewhat different story. That doesn't mean the patent system isn't fucked though, it surely is!
Ah, but those are "superkingdoms" or "domains", not "kingdoms". Not that it matters much, of course, as only convention can decide at which level we call the division of the tree of life for "kingdoms". But in this case, the convention is pretty universal.
In any case, the article was completely bollocks. No serious researcher at this level bothers much about what should be called "kingdom" and what should not. They have more then enough with drawing up a correct picture of the early stages of the tree of life, and leave labelling the branches with "kingdom", "phylum", "class", "order", "family", "genus", (and "sub-", "super-", "infra-" etc designations of those) up to bad popularizers of science. If the article had told us which kinds of organisms we now know evolved from which other kinds of organisms, it would have told us something useful. All it told us now, was that some popularizer has moved the labels around again, which isn't that surprising, given that they are all arbitrary.
Actually, no. The idea behind sleeping in an altitude chamber is that you do your workouts at sea-level. Sure, training in the alps brings some of the same benefits, but not all of them.
In the Olympics, at least in theory, all the athletes are required to be amateurs.
Unless they compete in some other sport than boxing. The "amateur"-requirement was dropped in the 70's. Welcome to year 2008.
Don't just assume that because a couple of them have been caught, that all of them are cheating.
Not at all. What I'm assuming is that *most* of them are cheating. But I'm sure there are athletes who are less succesful, as well as sports, such as curling, where cheating brings less benefits.
How would the Olympics make it fair for him to compete? Either he's too fast with the new artificial leg and he can't compete or they could tell him to use a leg that isn't as good and then he may not be fast enough.
Here's how it's fair. Athletes compete without artifical enhancements. That makes it fair. He's free to remove his artificial legs, and compete by running on his ankles. That makes it fair. He won't win, but that's also fair, because he isn't fastest. Just like most others, who haven't got the genetic ability to become a top sprinter. He's also free to use his artificial legs and run really fast, but not in the Olympics. That's also fair.
Bullshit. There are drugs that are completely undetectable. If you synthesize compounds that already exists in the body, the only way to detect them would be from detecting abnormal levels of them. But that is subjective, and as long as you stay within limits, nobody can tell if those abnormal levels natural or not, high natural levels could just as well be what made him/her a great athlete in the first place. Another (ancient) example is blood-doping, which also used to be detectable only by subjective methods. I believe they have better tests for blood-doping now, but then again, I'm sure they have newer drugs today as well. Top athletes have top doctors, and those doctors know how to avoid being caught by the tests. After all, it's what they do for a living.
Also, we have legalized doping, such as sleeping in an "altitude chamber". This is just as unnatural for the body as blood-doping is, but somehow one is legal, and the other is not. There is no possible way to be able to control doping 100%, there will always be a race between those who cheat, and those who detects cheaters. And I suspect, that in the long run, the cheaters will win, if they haven't already. Sure, most top athletes are against doping, but that doesn't mean they don't do it themselves, in order to remain competitive against all the other cheaters.
This is exactly why I feel we need 2 major leagues in most sports, an possibly 2 separate Olympic competitions. One for unaugmented humans the other for augmented humans.
We already have. The one for augmented humans is called the Olympics. The one for "natural" humans is done by unpaid athletes who have a real job or studies, in addition to the training they do. It's called something like "amateur", "hobbyist", "local sports club", "fifth division football" or something like that. The only rule concerning augmentation in the Olympics is that you must not be detected, which is pretty easy considering that these guys have the top doctors in sports medicine by their side, paid for by sponsors and/or the government. Sure, there is a grey zone, but so would it be with your proposal. Anyone who competes at top level, isn't doing it for health reasons anyway.
Yeah, hybernation is nice. But I disagree that this means there's no need for this product.
Actually, there's a need for this product. If your computer stops working, it's pretty nifty to be able to use a webbrowser to find out what's wrong, download drivers, etc... I generally find it more important to be able to fix my computer, than to be able to place blame. I want this in my bios (assuming it doesn't cost much, which I can't imagine it does).
Not at all. Compared to rebooting linux, rebooting windows is a dream come true. My ubuntu installation boots at least twice as slow as windows xp does. Unless the ubuntu boot-scripts figures out it needs to check one of my partitions, in which case I have no idea how long it takes to boot, but it's certainly a lot more than I'm willing to wait. If this happens, I tend to do something else and come back later. Linux is the reason I leave my computer on 24/7.
I notice that you have still not changed your behaviour. Instead of arguing against the arguments presented, you continue to put words into the mouth of your opponents. And instead of reading what people write to you, you look for spelling errors. How sad.
The fucking issue was well presented in the original article. Just because many people are in favour of copyright reform, and many people want free Hollywood blockbusters, does not necessarily mean that the two groups are the same. Similarly, just because I pointed out this flaw in your argumentation, does not mean that I believe "taking other peoples work for free is just dandy right". Untill you realize this, there's not much point in discussing anything else.
The thing holding the "peasants" back is lack of economic and social opportunity. There can only be so many rich people, and most of those slots are filled.
Correct, as long as we are talking about peasants several hundred years ago. Back then, your economic value was equal to the amount of land you owned. And the amount of land available was limited (at least untill the discovery of America). When you are talking about todays economy, nothing could be further from the truth. Our economy is based on services, it's not even about producing stuff anymore! And the amount of services you can provide, is basically unlimited. If you are not getting rich in todays society, it's because you haven't got what it takes, not because you are held down. That is, unless you are born in some place where you are predetermined to live in poverty forever, such as most third-world countries.
Ownership of ideas is merely one small facet of this. Those with economic wealth wish to control distribution of culture, because people are willing to pay for culture. The tension between the minority wishing to control the majority creates the tension
No. See above, you can't compare ownership of ideas with land-ownership. There was a limited amount of land available. Nobody could "create" more land. But there's nothing stopping you from creating new "culture", and unless you want them to, the corporations can't just "take" that away from you.
You have to work to convince people to give their money to you, and that's an opportunity that absolutely everyone has.
I disagree. All people are not equal. Some are cripples. Some are idiots. And some are just unemployablee, no matter how much they try. Your talk about opportunities and idealism is fine, but it does not reflect reality. The world can be a very cruel place if you don't fit in with it, and some people don't.
You honestly don't see a major difference between pointing a gun (or sword) at someone, and handing someone a wad of cash? Because the latter is what economic power comes down to: all you can do with money is offer it to people in exchange for things. You can't shoot someone with money, or burn down his house, or steal his property (even if you bribe the government to do it for you, it's the guns held by the police that do the forcing, not the money).
You honestly don't see the difference between having an honest discussion, or framing an issue so that it can't possibly be denied. Economic power is also the power to withhold money from someone dependent upon you, to fire them, to pay newspapers to write badly about someone, or even hiring a contract killer. Economic power can also be used to influence police, or even politicians, to make them favour you instead of others, or even the people. Having loads of money gives you the ability to do a lot of things beyond your absurd notion of "handing someone a wad of cash" instead of pointing a gun at them.
I'm sorry, but your argument is not a valid one. Instead of arguing against your opponents arguments and opinions, you accuse him of having the same opinions as someone else, and then continue to attack those opinions. In other words, since you can't argue succesively against the arguments presented to you, you instead pretend that what you are really arguing against is someone less articulate, and with different opinions. In my opinion, this is just sad.
That's not "articulating the possibilities for new business and political models". That's ignoring business models completely, even though the whole debate is about business models, because he doesn't have any answers to these hard questions. Only a list of childish demands - "i want it and i want it NOW!" - without thinking through the consequences. He focuses on "personal liberty" because the moment people engage him on basic economics, like how to amortize expensive productions over those who enjoy them, he has no answers.
What's most important to you, the "Unreal Engine" or basic freedom and rights? I'd say it's you who aren't thinking through consequences here. You are the one preferring circus to freedom.
Well, you already are, so nothing new here. You will also be free to continue to produce works, so nothing has changed there either. The only thing that's changed is that you are unlikely to earn anything from selling digital copies of your works. I doubt you consider yourself *forced* to produce works now, just because you are paid for it.
Wow, they must have cheap concerts where you live. Or expensive CDs. I'm used to paying a lot more for a live performance than for a piece of a modern replica of an antique optical storage medium. Up to 5 times more is not unusual, unless the black market's involved, in which case it would be even more expensive.
Visual artists make money off of the paintings they sell
So you have artists, specifically painters. What about filmmakers, animators, even video game studios?
but is there a good system for hooking up a hard drive as an additional device, perhaps via USB?
Yes. Open computer. Plug in drive at appropriate cable (usually IDE, just unplug your DVD-player if you haven't got any free IDE cables). Boot computer. Look at drive contents.
And what's a pretty good way to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data?
In general, the answer is "just throw them in the trash". Because very few people will bother to read your harddrive. Now, if you were Naomi Campbell, some members of the press might find it interesting enough to steal them from your trash and look at the contents, but so what, you're not Naomi Campbell.
If that's not good enough, try reformatting the disk. If that's not good enough try to overwrite all data several times with different patterns. There are several freeware and shareware programs to do that, for all common operating systems. If the disk fails before you're able to do that (and that's not good enough for you) (or you want to save time) try to physically destroy the disk. This can be done with cheap tools such as a drill, a sledgehammer, or a hammer and chisel. Once you've opened the casing and can access the casing, you can even use a pair of scissors. But there are more fun ways. A cheap, fun, and realistic solution is to find somewhere they are building or maintaining roads, and ask the guy driving the road roller if he can help you. Other fun but harder to find solutions involve impact crushers, metal smelts, and... well you get the idea!
Actually, I think most people want to read popularized stuff that's well written and explained, by someone who actually understands science, but also knows how to popularize it. I certainly don't want popularized crap written by journalists who don't even understand what they are writing. But maybe that's just me.
So what? Even though you are familiar with [Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma] Quadrant, all of the people in the world are familiar with east, west, north, and south, and all of us know where they are in relation to each other. Do you prefer an ambigious system familiar only to people reading bad bad science fiction, or one that is immediately useful and easy to understand for everyone?
Arguing that it's a "new application of existing terms" should definitely go in its favour. This is similar to use the word "program" about computer programs. We could call them "snuximop", "collection of binary data structured to run on an automatic computer system and perform a useful purpose", "theta data", or something else. In the end, a common word was chosen even though its meaning isn't exactly equal to its non-computer-related meaning. Which by the way, is also how the word "computer" started its existence.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe they just thought about something like this
In deed. Plato was right. Only philosophers should be allowed to rule the state. Democracy is to dangerous and unstable.
Then again, you should never trust what you hear on teh Intarweb. Just because this guy tells the story that way, doesn't mean that that's actually what happened, I'm sure Athena Diagnostics has a somewhat different story. That doesn't mean the patent system isn't fucked though, it surely is!
Ah, but those are "superkingdoms" or "domains", not "kingdoms". Not that it matters much, of course, as only convention can decide at which level we call the division of the tree of life for "kingdoms". But in this case, the convention is pretty universal.
In any case, the article was completely bollocks. No serious researcher at this level bothers much about what should be called "kingdom" and what should not. They have more then enough with drawing up a correct picture of the early stages of the tree of life, and leave labelling the branches with "kingdom", "phylum", "class", "order", "family", "genus", (and "sub-", "super-", "infra-" etc designations of those) up to bad popularizers of science. If the article had told us which kinds of organisms we now know evolved from which other kinds of organisms, it would have told us something useful. All it told us now, was that some popularizer has moved the labels around again, which isn't that surprising, given that they are all arbitrary.
Actually, no. The idea behind sleeping in an altitude chamber is that you do your workouts at sea-level. Sure, training in the alps brings some of the same benefits, but not all of them.
Here's how it's fair. Athletes compete without artifical enhancements. That makes it fair. He's free to remove his artificial legs, and compete by running on his ankles. That makes it fair. He won't win, but that's also fair, because he isn't fastest. Just like most others, who haven't got the genetic ability to become a top sprinter. He's also free to use his artificial legs and run really fast, but not in the Olympics. That's also fair.
No, I agree with the judges. Female athletes should show some skin.
Bullshit. There are drugs that are completely undetectable. If you synthesize compounds that already exists in the body, the only way to detect them would be from detecting abnormal levels of them. But that is subjective, and as long as you stay within limits, nobody can tell if those abnormal levels natural or not, high natural levels could just as well be what made him/her a great athlete in the first place. Another (ancient) example is blood-doping, which also used to be detectable only by subjective methods. I believe they have better tests for blood-doping now, but then again, I'm sure they have newer drugs today as well. Top athletes have top doctors, and those doctors know how to avoid being caught by the tests. After all, it's what they do for a living.
Also, we have legalized doping, such as sleeping in an "altitude chamber". This is just as unnatural for the body as blood-doping is, but somehow one is legal, and the other is not. There is no possible way to be able to control doping 100%, there will always be a race between those who cheat, and those who detects cheaters. And I suspect, that in the long run, the cheaters will win, if they haven't already. Sure, most top athletes are against doping, but that doesn't mean they don't do it themselves, in order to remain competitive against all the other cheaters.
We already have. The one for augmented humans is called the Olympics. The one for "natural" humans is done by unpaid athletes who have a real job or studies, in addition to the training they do. It's called something like "amateur", "hobbyist", "local sports club", "fifth division football" or something like that. The only rule concerning augmentation in the Olympics is that you must not be detected, which is pretty easy considering that these guys have the top doctors in sports medicine by their side, paid for by sponsors and/or the government. Sure, there is a grey zone, but so would it be with your proposal. Anyone who competes at top level, isn't doing it for health reasons anyway.
Yeah, hybernation is nice. But I disagree that this means there's no need for this product. Actually, there's a need for this product. If your computer stops working, it's pretty nifty to be able to use a webbrowser to find out what's wrong, download drivers, etc... I generally find it more important to be able to fix my computer, than to be able to place blame. I want this in my bios (assuming it doesn't cost much, which I can't imagine it does).
Not at all. Compared to rebooting linux, rebooting windows is a dream come true. My ubuntu installation boots at least twice as slow as windows xp does. Unless the ubuntu boot-scripts figures out it needs to check one of my partitions, in which case I have no idea how long it takes to boot, but it's certainly a lot more than I'm willing to wait. If this happens, I tend to do something else and come back later. Linux is the reason I leave my computer on 24/7.
I notice that you have still not changed your behaviour. Instead of arguing against the arguments presented, you continue to put words into the mouth of your opponents. And instead of reading what people write to you, you look for spelling errors. How sad.
The fucking issue was well presented in the original article. Just because many people are in favour of copyright reform, and many people want free Hollywood blockbusters, does not necessarily mean that the two groups are the same. Similarly, just because I pointed out this flaw in your argumentation, does not mean that I believe "taking other peoples work for free is just dandy right". Untill you realize this, there's not much point in discussing anything else.
I believe you have proven my point know.
Correct, as long as we are talking about peasants several hundred years ago. Back then, your economic value was equal to the amount of land you owned. And the amount of land available was limited (at least untill the discovery of America). When you are talking about todays economy, nothing could be further from the truth. Our economy is based on services, it's not even about producing stuff anymore! And the amount of services you can provide, is basically unlimited. If you are not getting rich in todays society, it's because you haven't got what it takes, not because you are held down. That is, unless you are born in some place where you are predetermined to live in poverty forever, such as most third-world countries.
No. See above, you can't compare ownership of ideas with land-ownership. There was a limited amount of land available. Nobody could "create" more land. But there's nothing stopping you from creating new "culture", and unless you want them to, the corporations can't just "take" that away from you.
I disagree. All people are not equal. Some are cripples. Some are idiots. And some are just unemployablee, no matter how much they try. Your talk about opportunities and idealism is fine, but it does not reflect reality. The world can be a very cruel place if you don't fit in with it, and some people don't.
You honestly don't see the difference between having an honest discussion, or framing an issue so that it can't possibly be denied. Economic power is also the power to withhold money from someone dependent upon you, to fire them, to pay newspapers to write badly about someone, or even hiring a contract killer. Economic power can also be used to influence police, or even politicians, to make them favour you instead of others, or even the people. Having loads of money gives you the ability to do a lot of things beyond your absurd notion of "handing someone a wad of cash" instead of pointing a gun at them.
I'm sorry, but your argument is not a valid one. Instead of arguing against your opponents arguments and opinions, you accuse him of having the same opinions as someone else, and then continue to attack those opinions. In other words, since you can't argue succesively against the arguments presented to you, you instead pretend that what you are really arguing against is someone less articulate, and with different opinions. In my opinion, this is just sad.
What's most important to you, the "Unreal Engine" or basic freedom and rights? I'd say it's you who aren't thinking through consequences here. You are the one preferring circus to freedom.
Well, you already are, so nothing new here. You will also be free to continue to produce works, so nothing has changed there either. The only thing that's changed is that you are unlikely to earn anything from selling digital copies of your works. I doubt you consider yourself *forced* to produce works now, just because you are paid for it.
Wow, they must have cheap concerts where you live. Or expensive CDs. I'm used to paying a lot more for a live performance than for a piece of a modern replica of an antique optical storage medium. Up to 5 times more is not unusual, unless the black market's involved, in which case it would be even more expensive.
I value freedom higher than circus.
Yes. Open computer. Plug in drive at appropriate cable (usually IDE, just unplug your DVD-player if you haven't got any free IDE cables). Boot computer. Look at drive contents.
In general, the answer is "just throw them in the trash". Because very few people will bother to read your harddrive. Now, if you were Naomi Campbell, some members of the press might find it interesting enough to steal them from your trash and look at the contents, but so what, you're not Naomi Campbell.
If that's not good enough, try reformatting the disk. If that's not good enough try to overwrite all data several times with different patterns. There are several freeware and shareware programs to do that, for all common operating systems. If the disk fails before you're able to do that (and that's not good enough for you) (or you want to save time) try to physically destroy the disk. This can be done with cheap tools such as a drill, a sledgehammer, or a hammer and chisel. Once you've opened the casing and can access the casing, you can even use a pair of scissors. But there are more fun ways. A cheap, fun, and realistic solution is to find somewhere they are building or maintaining roads, and ask the guy driving the road roller if he can help you. Other fun but harder to find solutions involve impact crushers, metal smelts, and... well you get the idea!
Actually, I think most people want to read popularized stuff that's well written and explained, by someone who actually understands science, but also knows how to popularize it. I certainly don't want popularized crap written by journalists who don't even understand what they are writing. But maybe that's just me.
So what? Even though you are familiar with [Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma] Quadrant, all of the people in the world are familiar with east, west, north, and south, and all of us know where they are in relation to each other. Do you prefer an ambigious system familiar only to people reading bad bad science fiction, or one that is immediately useful and easy to understand for everyone?
Arguing that it's a "new application of existing terms" should definitely go in its favour. This is similar to use the word "program" about computer programs. We could call them "snuximop", "collection of binary data structured to run on an automatic computer system and perform a useful purpose", "theta data", or something else. In the end, a common word was chosen even though its meaning isn't exactly equal to its non-computer-related meaning. Which by the way, is also how the word "computer" started its existence.