You did no such quick perusal, because one of the first books on the list at their web site is Animal Farm, published in 1945. Another is The Bean Trees published in 1988. You didn't look at their site at all, those books are on the first page!
There is a difference. LeGuin is a philosophical master, Rowling is a derivitive hack. And only the first half of the first Earthsea book has anything like Harry at Hogwarts. Ged graduates in the middle of A Wizard of Earthsea, the very first book.
If this lawsuit succeeds, future generations will be deprived of the helpful shortcut of Cliff's Notes and the like. Really, what's the difference between Cliff's Notes and something like this Lexicion thing? Sure, a lot of them are on books that are in the public domain, but by no means all. You can't copyright an idea, only its expression.
I'll second that. Kucinich rocks. Ron Paul is a bigot whose big new idea is to dismantle government. Just like the neo-cons, except that he actually means all of government, not just the parts that don't benefit the rich. At least he's fair, but I'd rather pay for social programs than have hordes of poor, hungry, desperate people eying me enviously. If everyone else is better off, there will be more opportunities for me.
Dems, lefties and progressives in general have such a reputation as goody-goodies that we can't say things like 'George W Bush and his Republican supporters are traitors,' without getting shat on, even when it's true. Repubs and conservatives in general say things like , "Dems are all traitors who should be hanged by their balls until dead," and for some reason, not only do they get away with it, but some people actually stop to debate whether ball-hanging is good enough for 'em. Even on a so-called (by the conservatives) 'progressive' site like Slashdot. Go figure:-/
You forgot large type for the elderly. Also, this way the person can vote, have their ballot printed, and scan it without worrying about whether they filled in the lines or circles all the way.
Her book, Animals in Translation has a bit about these mice. Very interesting, by the way. It seems there are two different olfactory systems, a 'near' one and 'far' one. The near system can only detect close up smells, while the far system can smell things further away. Prey animals are only afraid of close-up predators, as anyone who has ever seen a squirrel taunting a cat knows. Mice with just the 'far' smell system turned off will still be afraid of cat smells. Mice with the near system won't. The scientists did actually test to see if the mice were still afraid of cats at all, of course. And yes, a cat running up at them will still scare any mouse who still has active fear centers. But they have also done experiments breeding out fear, and those guys will just sit there staring at the cat until they become lunch.
Hmph. We have backup power for the cooling in our server room, but we had to deal with a fun little incident two weeks ago. Trane sent out a new HVAC monkey a month ago for routine maintenance. I was the one who let this doofus in, and let me tell you, he was a slack-jawed mouth-breathing yokel of tender years. He took one look at our equipment and said, I quote, "I ain't never seen nutin' like this'un before, hee-yuck!" I was a bit taken aback, but he seemed to go through all the proper motions.
Fast forward to three weeks ago. The temp is fine, but the humidity keeps going down. I tell management, but this is a state agency and everything around here takes three times as long as it should. For a state agency, that's outstanding, by the way. Anyway, noting gets done. Then we find out WHY the humidity is going down: seems the HVAC monkey didn't screw in the water bottle all the way and the entire 5 ton fills up with water, until it shorts out at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon and dumps water everywhere.
Well, we got our four emergency portable coolers in with little tubes leading out into the hall, the fans on, and the doors open right quick, but the temp still shot up to over 100 in under ten minutes. Well, I told hem something was up, and anyway, I'm on the VMware/BladeCenter server consolidation team, and this is just more of an argument to fund us better. But I guess the moral of the story is, don't let slack-jawed mouth-breathing yokels fix your mission critical systems.
The TRS-80 Model I came out in 1977, the XT came out in 83. We bought our TRS-80 in 1978. We got an expansion interface with floppy disk, a 300 baud modem, and a subscription to CompuServe in 1979. But I'd used a computer well before that, in 1975. A PDP, actually. I was all of five year old, my friend's dad was a comp-sci prof at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and he would set us down at his teletype, log us in, put us in a restricted shell and let us waste reams of paper playing games like hunt the wumpus, lunar lander, and colossal caves.
So don't try to fix nothin' for me, newbie. You'll just break it. Now sitten backen unt watchen das blinkenlights.;-)
You young whippersnappers with your new-fangled IBM-XP computers. Why, when I was a lad, we did business on a TRS-80. Model I no less. My dad wrote a program to analyze Rorschach test scores on it. And get this: he sold it to a friend back in, oh, '85 I think, who used it for book keeping at his home business for the next ten years. That's right, this guy was keeping his books on a fricken' TRS-80 Model I in 1995.
What an appropriate sig. "I hurt people for fun." Charming. You may be a psychopath, but at least you're honest about it. As reprehensible as "Turn their [terrorists] country of origin into a smoking wasteland" is, the more important point is that it just won't accomplish what you think it will. What it would accomplish is to unite the entire world against us. We would be the ones obliterated. But, as you hurt people for fun, I'm sure you'd find any outcome featuring enough hurt people enjoyable.
it's also an interesting legal one: If a thousand gallons of water runs down the drain while you're drinking from a firehose, did you really drink it all? Well, if a Pope shits in the woods, then all bears are Catholic, so yes.
Yes, yes I do have some idea of the details because I read the article. For instance, I know that TSC is a private company contracted by the government to deliver Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux on them. I know that Microsoft is negotiating a $400,000 deal with said private company for 'marketing activities' relating to Windows on Classmate PCs. That is all I need to know, really. If Microsoft had negotiated that deal with the Nigerian government, there would be no real moral or legal issue.
So, continuing the hit-man analogy, it is as if I agreed to pay $400,000 to a hit-man for "marketing," on the contingency that you wind up dead. It's not like I'm paying him to kill you, I just said that, if you were dead, there would be a lucrative "marketing" contract. How well do you think that would stand up in court? Legal systems aside, do you find it moral or ethical?
No matter the semantic disguise Microsoft was in negotiations to pay a company to destroy someone else's property. Bribery isn't the issue, nor is fraud. This is about property rights, plain and simple. It's about theft or vandalism by proxy.
I'd love to hear you argue as to why people should be allowed to purchase the services of a thief or vandal.
As you've admitted to being a libertarian, I suppose I should make one for you, too:
1. Declare war on Big Government with bogus slogan "Let the free market fix __________" 2. Announce plans to decrease funding to social programs 3. Figure out that you have no one in any elected office in any country anywhere who can carry out 2. 4. Announce that someone who has never professed to be a libertarian but holds a few libertarian ideals, is in fact a libertarian. Do the same for historical figures, especially anarchists. 5. Make up bogus arguments about the magical free market that will never be put to any sort of test, due to 3., above. 6. Parrot back tired arguments that were disproved hundreds of years ago, back in the days of lassez-faire. Conveniently forget about child labor, horrid working conditions, rampant pollution, institutionalized racism, debt slavery, and any other facts that show unregulated free market capitalism destroys lives. 7. Cherry pick examples of deregulation and privatization, ignoring any cases that prove libertarian methods wrong. 8. Try to convince other libertarians to all move to the same state so you can remedy point 2. 9. Realize that convincing self-centered libertarians to do anything is like trying to herd cats. 10. The rest of us grow bored with your childish, self involved, "Nyah nyah, you're not the boss of me!" political stance and ignore you, as libertarians have never managed to do anything more than talk.
So if I hire someone to break the law, I'm not guilty? Bribery in the form of paying someone to break a contract is one thing, but this is different. This is like hiring a hit-man, or paying someone to burn down a rival's shop. We're talking paying someone to destroy another person's property.
Why do libertarians always parrot back arguments without understanding them? Can't you guys think for yourselves?
You obviously haven't read the article. Let me quote:
Mandriva had closed a deal in mid-August to provide a customised Linux operating system and support for 17,000 Intel Classmate PCs intended for Nigerian schools, but found out last week that the company deploying the computers for the government, Technology Support Center (TSC), planned to wipe the computers' disks and install Windows XP instead. You are using the libertarian defense of bribery, but this is fraud, and thus your arguments have no merit. Mandriva and the government had a contract. Microsoft entered into a contract with a third party to destroy government property. How is it that you don't understand this? It makes no rational sense.
Let me make an analogy. You enter into a contract with a toothpaste company to purchase toothpaste in bulk, but the local dog shit dealer wants you to brush your teeth with dog shit. So he pays your delivery man to squeeze out the tubes of toothpaste and fill them with dog shit. This is legal, moral or ethical HOW, exactly?
I must have missed the place in the article where the author makes the claim that enormous demand equals lower prices. Here I was thinking that it was the enormous supply. Brought on by competition, yes, which was brought on by the demand, yes, but that's a whole chain of cause and effect.
To say that enormous demand means lower prices is about as meaningful as saying that being born causes death.
Slashdot Mirror
You did no such quick perusal, because one of the first books on the list at their web site is Animal Farm, published in 1945. Another is The Bean Trees published in 1988. You didn't look at their site at all, those books are on the first page!
There is a difference. LeGuin is a philosophical master, Rowling is a derivitive hack. And only the first half of the first Earthsea book has anything like Harry at Hogwarts. Ged graduates in the middle of A Wizard of Earthsea, the very first book.
But isn't "Harry Potter" a trademark?
You've just given me a million dollar idea! Hairy Pothead brand rolling papers. They roll like magic! Expectum Aymsohigh!
If what you say is true, I would think they would have been sued into oblivion.
If this lawsuit succeeds, future generations will be deprived of the helpful shortcut of Cliff's Notes and the like. Really, what's the difference between Cliff's Notes and something like this Lexicion thing? Sure, a lot of them are on books that are in the public domain, but by no means all. You can't copyright an idea, only its expression.
I'll second that. Kucinich rocks. Ron Paul is a bigot whose big new idea is to dismantle government. Just like the neo-cons, except that he actually means all of government, not just the parts that don't benefit the rich. At least he's fair, but I'd rather pay for social programs than have hordes of poor, hungry, desperate people eying me enviously. If everyone else is better off, there will be more opportunities for me.
The Condorcet Method. But changing our country's voting system is about as likely as us developing a porcine air force.
Dems, lefties and progressives in general have such a reputation as goody-goodies that we can't say things like 'George W Bush and his Republican supporters are traitors,' without getting shat on, even when it's true. Repubs and conservatives in general say things like , "Dems are all traitors who should be hanged by their balls until dead," and for some reason, not only do they get away with it, but some people actually stop to debate whether ball-hanging is good enough for 'em. Even on a so-called (by the conservatives) 'progressive' site like Slashdot. Go figure :-/
Please, do point out where anyone claiming to be progressive advocates rape, murder, and torture. This is classic psychological projection.
You forgot large type for the elderly. Also, this way the person can vote, have their ballot printed, and scan it without worrying about whether they filled in the lines or circles all the way.
Her book, Animals in Translation has a bit about these mice. Very interesting, by the way. It seems there are two different olfactory systems, a 'near' one and 'far' one. The near system can only detect close up smells, while the far system can smell things further away. Prey animals are only afraid of close-up predators, as anyone who has ever seen a squirrel taunting a cat knows. Mice with just the 'far' smell system turned off will still be afraid of cat smells. Mice with the near system won't. The scientists did actually test to see if the mice were still afraid of cats at all, of course. And yes, a cat running up at them will still scare any mouse who still has active fear centers. But they have also done experiments breeding out fear, and those guys will just sit there staring at the cat until they become lunch.
Sorry, you lost me about 1/2 way through.
Hmph. We have backup power for the cooling in our server room, but we had to deal with a fun little incident two weeks ago. Trane sent out a new HVAC monkey a month ago for routine maintenance. I was the one who let this doofus in, and let me tell you, he was a slack-jawed mouth-breathing yokel of tender years. He took one look at our equipment and said, I quote, "I ain't never seen nutin' like this'un before, hee-yuck!" I was a bit taken aback, but he seemed to go through all the proper motions.
Fast forward to three weeks ago. The temp is fine, but the humidity keeps going down. I tell management, but this is a state agency and everything around here takes three times as long as it should. For a state agency, that's outstanding, by the way. Anyway, noting gets done. Then we find out WHY the humidity is going down: seems the HVAC monkey didn't screw in the water bottle all the way and the entire 5 ton fills up with water, until it shorts out at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon and dumps water everywhere.
Well, we got our four emergency portable coolers in with little tubes leading out into the hall, the fans on, and the doors open right quick, but the temp still shot up to over 100 in under ten minutes. Well, I told hem something was up, and anyway, I'm on the VMware/BladeCenter server consolidation team, and this is just more of an argument to fund us better. But I guess the moral of the story is, don't let slack-jawed mouth-breathing yokels fix your mission critical systems.
The TRS-80 Model I came out in 1977, the XT came out in 83. We bought our TRS-80 in 1978. We got an expansion interface with floppy disk, a 300 baud modem, and a subscription to CompuServe in 1979. But I'd used a computer well before that, in 1975. A PDP, actually. I was all of five year old, my friend's dad was a comp-sci prof at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and he would set us down at his teletype, log us in, put us in a restricted shell and let us waste reams of paper playing games like hunt the wumpus, lunar lander, and colossal caves.
;-)
So don't try to fix nothin' for me, newbie. You'll just break it. Now sitten backen unt watchen das blinkenlights.
You young whippersnappers with your new-fangled IBM-XP computers. Why, when I was a lad, we did business on a TRS-80. Model I no less. My dad wrote a program to analyze Rorschach test scores on it. And get this: he sold it to a friend back in, oh, '85 I think, who used it for book keeping at his home business for the next ten years. That's right, this guy was keeping his books on a fricken' TRS-80 Model I in 1995.
You kids these days...
What an appropriate sig. "I hurt people for fun." Charming. You may be a psychopath, but at least you're honest about it. As reprehensible as "Turn their [terrorists] country of origin into a smoking wasteland" is, the more important point is that it just won't accomplish what you think it will. What it would accomplish is to unite the entire world against us. We would be the ones obliterated. But, as you hurt people for fun, I'm sure you'd find any outcome featuring enough hurt people enjoyable.
The Internet is not a person or house that you can just dump papers or effects on. It is a series of tubes that happen to connect to the NSA.
Oh, I see. You're a smart libertarian who can take a joke. Even rarer than a Unicorn. ;-)
Yes, yes I do have some idea of the details because I read the article. For instance, I know that TSC is a private company contracted by the government to deliver Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux on them. I know that Microsoft is negotiating a $400,000 deal with said private company for 'marketing activities' relating to Windows on Classmate PCs. That is all I need to know, really. If Microsoft had negotiated that deal with the Nigerian government, there would be no real moral or legal issue.
So, continuing the hit-man analogy, it is as if I agreed to pay $400,000 to a hit-man for "marketing," on the contingency that you wind up dead. It's not like I'm paying him to kill you, I just said that, if you were dead, there would be a lucrative "marketing" contract. How well do you think that would stand up in court? Legal systems aside, do you find it moral or ethical?
No matter the semantic disguise Microsoft was in negotiations to pay a company to destroy someone else's property. Bribery isn't the issue, nor is fraud. This is about property rights, plain and simple. It's about theft or vandalism by proxy.
I'd love to hear you argue as to why people should be allowed to purchase the services of a thief or vandal.
As you've admitted to being a libertarian, I suppose I should make one for you, too:
1. Declare war on Big Government with bogus slogan "Let the free market fix __________"
2. Announce plans to decrease funding to social programs
3. Figure out that you have no one in any elected office in any country anywhere who can carry out 2.
4. Announce that someone who has never professed to be a libertarian but holds a few libertarian ideals, is in fact a libertarian. Do the same for historical figures, especially anarchists.
5. Make up bogus arguments about the magical free market that will never be put to any sort of test, due to 3., above.
6. Parrot back tired arguments that were disproved hundreds of years ago, back in the days of lassez-faire. Conveniently forget about child labor, horrid working conditions, rampant pollution, institutionalized racism, debt slavery, and any other facts that show unregulated free market capitalism destroys lives.
7. Cherry pick examples of deregulation and privatization, ignoring any cases that prove libertarian methods wrong.
8. Try to convince other libertarians to all move to the same state so you can remedy point 2.
9. Realize that convincing self-centered libertarians to do anything is like trying to herd cats.
10. The rest of us grow bored with your childish, self involved, "Nyah nyah, you're not the boss of me!" political stance and ignore you, as libertarians have never managed to do anything more than talk.
Wait, that's not funny, it's just sad.
So if I hire someone to break the law, I'm not guilty? Bribery in the form of paying someone to break a contract is one thing, but this is different. This is like hiring a hit-man, or paying someone to burn down a rival's shop. We're talking paying someone to destroy another person's property.
Why do libertarians always parrot back arguments without understanding them? Can't you guys think for yourselves?
Let me make an analogy. You enter into a contract with a toothpaste company to purchase toothpaste in bulk, but the local dog shit dealer wants you to brush your teeth with dog shit. So he pays your delivery man to squeeze out the tubes of toothpaste and fill them with dog shit. This is legal, moral or ethical HOW, exactly?
I must have missed the place in the article where the author makes the claim that enormous demand equals lower prices. Here I was thinking that it was the enormous supply. Brought on by competition, yes, which was brought on by the demand, yes, but that's a whole chain of cause and effect.
To say that enormous demand means lower prices is about as meaningful as saying that being born causes death.