Although Stallman probably knew that tinfoil doesnt work, he was more likely trying to make a political point about RFID, which was a good thing IMHO.
Personally I would have suggested that people go to the snack room and throw it in a microwave oven, that way it makes it a pain in the ass and costs those who want to implement this crap. Money is the only thing people like this understand anyway.
The biggest surprise for me was that Microsoft, who usually pisses me off, actually was the only company to step up to the plate in a meaningful way. I expected far, far better from the antivirus/spyware vendors.
I somewhat agree with your post, but Microsoft desperately needs good PR, as well as the fact that they are pissed that everyone is going to Sonys BlueRay. However it is Microsofts idiotic autorun feature that installs this crap in the first place.
Yeah I know it can be disabled, but what normal user would expect an audio CD to install software?
While Sony could be prosecuted under U.S. cybercrime law, no one thinks it will be.
What I want to know is why the fuck shouldn't a corporation be held to the same rules the rest of us are? As the line above illustrates, people now assume that companies can abuse the law as they see fit and not get reprimanded.
While the rest of us (AKA as not rich) get sued into oblivion or prosecuted to the fullest for downloading a shitty CD that should only be $5.
I will keep that in mind the next time I am around my portuguese girlfriend.
Speaking of which, do you know any single portuguese women?
Books or congressmen NOT FOR RESALE
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 1
Pat Schroeder is president of the Association of American Publishers and a former member of Congress from Colorado. Bob Barr, a former member of the House Judiciary Committee, is an author, newspaper columnist and analyst for CNN.
I guess the warranty on congressmen lasts as long as copyright does*.
Is that all you can think of? What about Donkey.bas? It written by Bill Gates himself, is innovative, and sets the bar for GW-BASIC games for years to come.
Microsoft Bob and Clippy, get with the program man.
Reminds me a friend I used to work with at a non profit company in central Ky.
He was an all around talented CS guy and the first time confronted with a task, would spend an hour or two writing a perl script to automate the task, then he would never have to worry about it again. His predecessor always manually performed these tasks every day, that took him hours, and he would always complain about deadlines.
It got to the point where my friend show up in the morning, do literally about an hours work, and then slack off the rest of the day by reading a french novel, surf slashdot, or talk about the differences between different linux distros. He was a goldmine of linux and unix information.
Lets face it, most of our apparatchiks in office give a flying fuck for what most of us stand for or believe in. Our current government is so irredeemably corrupt, that fixing it would take much more effort and be more complex than simply replacing the 'system' with something more logical and fair.
However, due to the inherent apathy, laziness, and stupidity of the general U.S. population, it will be 2-3 generations before the populace finally wakes up and realizes the situation at hand and takes action. The only silver lining to this cloud will be that the corporate and plutocratic scions responsible for these actions will pay for their overbearing greed with their lives, giving at least a couple of generations a government worth being proud of.
Traditionally this sort of thing would have been done by a true (ie. not neoconservative) conservative Republican, fighting for the individual rights of the American citizenry.
I call BS.
Not since the 19th century has the republican party given hardly any thought to the individual rights or welfare of citizens. I sure as hell dont remember hearing about the republican party being particularly active protecting civil rights of disenfranchised minorities during the sixties.
More accurately, Bouchers actions represent the type of actions that gave the Democratic party a reputation of being the champion of the 'little guy' in the first place.
Its too sad he is the exception rather than the rule, IMHO both the Republican and Democratice parties are essentially corporate whores these days.
I live in Houston, one of your reps is John Culberson, he is a republican, so most likely you will be wasting your time with him. But here is the site of the texas state senate with its list of state senators searchable by zip code.
Personally I think for your opinion to make any real difference down here you have to be a rich 'good ole boy', or a right wing religious fanatic.
What the hell are we doing business with a communist country with such horrendous human rights violations?
Replace the word communist with capitalist, and you would be talking about the U.S., and considering this was the last nation on earth to outlaw slavery, I wouldnt hop on the moralistic high horse and chuck too many stones chinas way.
After all, there are no human rights violations in a nation that incarcerates its own citizens for 'national security' reasons and denies these same people access to legal defense. A nation that excessively monitors its populace and has full access to internet usage records, library records, and phone survelleince without a courts approval. A nation that brutalizes and humiliates prisoner 'enemy combatants', the very people whose nation was invaded on totally false and fabricated grounds. All for 'national security' reasons.
I also am going to take the opportunity to remind the Slashdot community that a good percentage of our founders were not fundamentalists, and emphatically supported the concept of separation of church and state. I also would like to share the fact that it has been a practice of late for the religious right to spread misconceptions on this topic.
Christian revisionism Here or here about your founding fathers. I suppose the formerly conservative supreme court is now liberal because they wont allow an Alabama judge to activily endorse the christian religion.
Other than the people who got shipped over in chains (african americans), starved out (americans of irish descent during the potato famine), were here before us (latinos/american indians), sent to serve out prison sentences, or just wanted a better life, I would hazard a guess and say very few came to the US exclusively because of religious regions.
Is it me, or does it seem that every week that goes by, I read, hear or encounter something that makes me believe that the U.S. is turning into a increasingly dumbed down, lowest common denominator, theocratic fundamentalist society?
We cant research stem cells because jesus doesnt like stem cells, every other person you meet has a fucking creed or "w" bumper sticker on their car. Creed also sucks but thats another issue. Forget facts, forget learning, its much easier to believe and have faith.
The type of people that listen to screaming right wing nutcases that tell them what to think, then watch their Nascar, sports and wrestling with other people screaming at them, then on sundays go to their protestant churches to listen to yet another person scream heavily edited and faultily translated 'holy' screeds at them.
And I am supposed to listen to these low-grade meme receptacles because they are more righteous, more holy and more american?
Then fuck america and give me a one way ticket to France with a complimentary bag of olestra free French fries.
P.S. to the right wing tool in the house (Rep. Bob Ney) that came up with the idiotic moniker Freedom fries, they were invented in fucking Belgium.
I do think paying 'pro-ams' money would be disastrous. Govt money seems to be a sirens song for hucksters, slackers and corrupt businesses. One of the reasons I think people like working on opensource software is because they work with people that love what they do and want to do it the right way and be proud of it. You start mixing govt money into this equation, then every tom, dick and harry will be claiming they are pro-ams because they have contributed a bunch of half-a$$ed source to a project. This in my opinion would destroy the quality and 'pure' ideology of open source/free software. Keep OSDL, keep paypal or other donations to a project (firefox is a good example), but keep govt funds out.
Despite owning a few key apps (Photoshop, LightWave, Maya) my art production output is rather poor.
I started out adding graphics elements to widgets, ie command buttons and toolbars on a windows platform and used regular MS paint. I learned my limited skills by looking at toolbar buttons, learned how color and shading were used to give objects different effects like raised, sunken, etc. I even borrowed an old trick used in the 80s on 8 bit game consoles and created the colors I needed by dithering others, (this was needed in the early to mid 90s because not all icon editors or development tools allowed more than the basic 16 colors, esp on toolbars.
Although it can take a while to learn more advanced functionality of Photoshop, I believe your problem is not knowing the best technique to accomplish the job...you just need more experience.
Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?
Replace Saddam with the Bush family and the same statement would be true.
Any Mozilla user has to have come into contact with it, so why has it not been fixed yet?
Dunno -- maybe they are helping fix more dangerous bugs found by other users that expect or demand everything be perfect with the open source browser they are using...
....pay for a Political Broadcast System portraying the evils of "right-wing extremists" who want their own country back.
What country is that? 1930s Germany?
OK troll I'll bite. Lemme clue you in, until recently, your people have never had this country, otherwise we would have an official U.S. religion, language and race. And we sure as hell didnt have our tax dollars paying for your Faith Based Initiative garbage for well over 200 years. So tell your right-wing extremist buddies Ashcroft (so popular he lost an election to a corpse), Bush and Rummy, you want to help them setup their own god fearin country. Just do us all a favor and find someplace other than the North American continent.
This unjustified war is going to be a rallying cry for countless jihads and actions against the U.S. for generations to come. These are people that became super pissed when the president used the word crusade to describe U.S. intent in Iraq.
Using this terminology (either through incompetence or stupidity) set the tone for this whole war in Iraq. The middle eastern people do not easily forget godless infidels (to their eyes) invading their holy lands.
Slashdot Mirror
Although Stallman probably knew that tinfoil doesnt work, he was more likely trying to make a political point about RFID, which was a good thing IMHO.
Personally I would have suggested that people go to the snack room and throw it in a microwave oven, that way it makes it a pain in the ass and costs those who want to implement this crap. Money is the only thing people like this understand anyway.
The biggest surprise for me was that Microsoft, who usually pisses me off, actually was the only company to step up to the plate in a meaningful way. I expected far, far better from the antivirus/spyware vendors.
I somewhat agree with your post, but Microsoft desperately needs good PR, as well as the fact that they are pissed that everyone is going to Sonys BlueRay. However it is Microsofts idiotic autorun feature that installs this crap in the first place.
Yeah I know it can be disabled, but what normal user would expect an audio CD to install software?
While Sony could be prosecuted under U.S. cybercrime law, no one thinks it will be.
What I want to know is why the fuck shouldn't a corporation be held to the same rules the rest of us are? As the line above illustrates, people now assume that companies can abuse the law as they see fit and not get reprimanded.
While the rest of us (AKA as not rich) get sued into oblivion or prosecuted to the fullest for downloading a shitty CD that should only be $5.
I will keep that in mind the next time I am around my portuguese girlfriend.
Speaking of which, do you know any single portuguese women?
Pat Schroeder is president of the Association of American Publishers and a former member of Congress from Colorado. Bob Barr, a former member of the House Judiciary Committee, is an author, newspaper columnist and analyst for CNN.
I guess the warranty on congressmen lasts as long as copyright does*.
* See List of countries' copyright length - USA
I didnt know the Unabomber posted on slashdot.
Missed that.
I am trying to figure out what Ryan | Topside Porn... is
Microsoft Bob and Clippy
Is that all you can think of? What about Donkey.bas? It written by Bill Gates himself, is innovative, and sets the bar for GW-BASIC games for years to come.
Microsoft Bob and Clippy, get with the program man.
Reminds me a friend I used to work with at a non profit company in central Ky.
He was an all around talented CS guy and the first time confronted with a task, would spend an hour or two writing a perl script to automate the task, then he would never have to worry about it again. His predecessor always manually performed these tasks every day, that took him hours, and he would always complain about deadlines.
It got to the point where my friend show up in the morning, do literally about an hours work, and then slack off the rest of the day by reading a french novel, surf slashdot, or talk about the differences between different linux distros. He was a goldmine of linux and unix information.
So if you are reading this Jason, peace 'dog'.
When the U.S. has a revolution.
Lets face it, most of our apparatchiks in office give a flying fuck for what most of us stand for or believe in.
Our current government is so irredeemably corrupt, that fixing it would take much more effort and be more complex than simply replacing the 'system' with something more logical and fair.
However, due to the inherent apathy, laziness, and stupidity of the general U.S. population, it will be 2-3 generations before the populace finally wakes up and realizes the situation at hand and takes action. The only silver lining to this cloud will be that the corporate and plutocratic scions responsible for these actions will pay for their overbearing greed with their lives, giving at least a couple of generations a government worth being proud of.
The headline should actually read:
Microsoft to embrace and extinguish RSS.
Traditionally this sort of thing would have been done by a true (ie. not neoconservative) conservative Republican, fighting for the individual rights of the American citizenry.
I call BS.
Not since the 19th century has the republican party given hardly any thought to the individual rights or welfare of citizens.
I sure as hell dont remember hearing about the republican party being particularly active protecting civil rights of disenfranchised minorities during the sixties.
More accurately, Bouchers actions represent the type of actions that gave the Democratic party a reputation of being the champion of the 'little guy' in the first place.
Its too sad he is the exception rather than the rule, IMHO both the Republican and Democratice parties are essentially corporate whores these days.
I live in Houston, one of your reps is John Culberson, he is a republican, so most likely you will be wasting your time with him.
But here is the site of the texas state senate with its list of state senators searchable by zip code.
Personally I think for your opinion to make any real difference down here you have to be a rich 'good ole boy', or a right wing religious fanatic.
What the hell are we doing business with a communist country with such horrendous human rights violations?
Replace the word communist with capitalist, and you would be talking about the U.S., and considering this was the last nation on earth to outlaw slavery, I wouldnt hop on the moralistic high horse and chuck too many stones chinas way.
After all, there are no human rights violations in a nation that incarcerates its own citizens for 'national security' reasons and denies these same people access to legal defense. A nation that excessively monitors its populace and has full access to internet usage records, library records, and phone survelleince without a courts approval. A nation that brutalizes and humiliates prisoner 'enemy combatants', the very people whose nation was invaded on totally false and fabricated grounds. All for 'national security' reasons.
No human rights violations there, right?
I also am going to take the opportunity to remind the Slashdot community that a good percentage of our founders were not fundamentalists, and emphatically supported the concept of separation of church and state. I also would like to share the fact that it has been a practice of late for the religious right to spread misconceptions on this topic.
Christian revisionism
Here or here about your founding fathers.
I suppose the formerly conservative supreme court is now liberal because they wont allow an Alabama judge to activily endorse the christian religion.
Other than the people who got shipped over in chains (african americans), starved out (americans of irish descent during the potato famine), were here before us (latinos/american indians), sent to serve out prison sentences, or just wanted a better life, I would hazard a guess and say very few came to the US exclusively because of religious regions.
Is it me, or does it seem that every week that goes by, I read, hear or encounter something that makes me believe that the U.S. is turning into a increasingly dumbed down, lowest common denominator, theocratic fundamentalist society?
We cant research stem cells because jesus doesnt like stem cells, every other person you meet has a fucking creed or "w" bumper sticker on their car. Creed also sucks but thats another issue. Forget facts, forget learning, its much easier to believe and have faith.
The type of people that listen to screaming right wing nutcases that tell them what to think, then watch their Nascar, sports and wrestling with other people screaming at them, then on sundays go to their protestant churches to listen to yet another person scream heavily edited and faultily translated 'holy' screeds at them.
And I am supposed to listen to these low-grade meme receptacles because they are more righteous, more holy and more american?
Then fuck america and give me a one way ticket to France with a complimentary bag of olestra free French fries.
P.S. to the right wing tool in the house (Rep. Bob Ney) that came up with the idiotic moniker Freedom fries, they were invented in fucking Belgium.
I do think paying 'pro-ams' money would be disastrous. Govt money seems to be a sirens song for hucksters, slackers and corrupt businesses.
One of the reasons I think people like working on opensource software is because they work with people that love what they do and want to do it the right way and be proud of it. You start mixing govt money into this equation, then every tom, dick and harry will be claiming they are pro-ams because they have contributed a bunch of half-a$$ed source to a project. This in my opinion would destroy the quality and 'pure' ideology of open source/free software. Keep OSDL, keep paypal or other donations to a project (firefox is a good example), but keep govt funds out.
Despite owning a few key apps (Photoshop, LightWave, Maya) my art production output is rather poor.
I started out adding graphics elements to widgets, ie command buttons and toolbars on a windows platform and used regular MS paint. I learned my limited skills by looking at toolbar buttons, learned how color and shading were used to give objects different effects like raised, sunken, etc. I even borrowed an old trick used in the 80s on 8 bit game consoles and created the colors I needed by dithering others, (this was needed in the early to mid 90s because not all icon editors or development tools allowed more than the basic 16 colors, esp on toolbars.
Although it can take a while to learn more advanced functionality of Photoshop, I believe your problem is not knowing the best technique to accomplish the job...you just need more experience.
What is he talking about? Microsoft hasn't been a feisty upstart since about 1986.
:)
Funny, but Microsoft has actually been around longer than that. Subtract eleven years and you will be right on the mark.
I just bought a 20GB ipod+hp. The only difference is a small hp logo on the back. It came with both a firewire and usb 2.0 cable.
Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?
Replace Saddam with the Bush family and the same statement would be true.
Any Mozilla user has to have come into contact with it, so why has it not been fixed yet?
Dunno -- maybe they are helping fix more dangerous bugs found by other users that expect or demand everything be perfect with the open source browser they are using...
....pay for a Political Broadcast System portraying the evils of "right-wing extremists" who want their own country back.
What country is that? 1930s Germany?
OK troll I'll bite. Lemme clue you in, until recently, your people have never had this country, otherwise we would have an official U.S. religion, language and race. And we sure as hell didnt have our tax dollars paying for your Faith Based Initiative garbage for well over 200 years. So tell your right-wing extremist buddies Ashcroft (so popular he lost an election to a corpse), Bush and Rummy, you want to help them setup their own god fearin country. Just do us all a favor and find someplace other than the North American continent.
Is America safer now? Heck yes.
Is America safer now? Hell no.
This unjustified war is going to be a rallying cry for countless jihads and actions against the U.S. for generations to come. These are people that became super pissed when the president used the word crusade to describe U.S. intent in Iraq.
Using this terminology (either through incompetence or stupidity) set the tone for this whole war in Iraq. The middle eastern people do not easily forget godless infidels (to their eyes) invading their holy lands.
Do we really need to the News for Nerds site turning into moveon.org?
:)
Your new to these parts arent you?