While I agree the story wasn't all that great, the idea was that they weren't hiking distance. She traveled for decades. Hence the grown up dragon and her being old. How you can travel for decades and not realize it, how come there are villainous marauders lurking in mountains so inaccessible that no caravan or other objects of value would ever get there (and why he was alone), and what the old man was doing up there are all better questions in my opinion.
Which is exactly what I said... I was responding to a guy that seemed to think it was about charging everyone equally, and pointing out that he was wrong. In fact, two more sentences on in my post you quoted was:
"Not because you went to Youtube, when your ISP has a deal with Hulu, no. But because you used more resources than your neighbor, sure. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with whether you're charged for speed, total bandwidth used, or both. It's about preventing you from being charged extra to use certain protocols or access certain destinations."
I can see not reading the whole thing if it was a wall of text, but my post was a short five sentence paragraph.
Because *you* are using bandwidth. If *you* use more bandwidth than the guy next to you, it's reasonable to think that *you* pay more. Not because you used the wrong protocol, no. Not because you went to Youtube, when your ISP has a deal with Hulu, no. But because you used more resources than your neighbor, sure. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with whether you're charged for speed, total bandwidth used, or both. It's about preventing you from being charged extra to use certain protocols or access certain destinations.
Actually I don't see any problem with charging consumers more per se. If I use twice the bandwidth that my neighbor does, then there's some logic that I pay twice as much. What's objectionable isn't that they charge more for using more bandwidth, but that they charge more for applications that they assume will use more bandwidth. Example:
I have an Internet connection. I use it for e-mail and web browsing (low bandwidth activities) on a moderate scale, but a few times a month I torrent something (Blizzard uses torrents for it's game updates, Linux distros, etc). While I occasionally use this "high bandwidth application" my overall usage is rather low (say 5-7 GB a month).
My neighbor has the same Internet connection I do. He uses only "low bandwidth applications", but he uses them *constantly*. Say he's a teenager and it's summer vacation. He's *always* doing something on the 'Net. He downloads multiple small files (often at the same time), but does so over low bandwidth (theoretically) protocols like http and ftp. In the end he uses way more bandwidth in a given month than me. 25-30 GB.
Under the types of rules that Internet companies want to see, I would be potentially charged more than my neighbor. Because I use a "high bandwidth service" (despite that I don't use it much and it doesn't actually add up to that much bandwidth), and he doesn't (despite that he actually uses far more bandwidth because of his sheer volume of activity).
A big part of the problem here is that Americans have gotten used to "unlimited Internet". No ISP wants to be the first to say "you pay by the GB", because they know that they'll get their lunches eaten by all the "unlimited" services. So rather than limit the actual bandwidth people are allowed to use (or charging a metered rate), they attempt to offer "unlimited" service while at the same time demonizing certain protocols and applications and trying to charge more for those. This allows them to claim that you can use the network as much as you want, while at the same time curtailing the use of protocols that are most likely to stress the network.
Net Neutrality isn't about you getting free Internetz. It's about companies being forced to sell unrestricted access to the network (on the protocol and application level). They can sell packages based on bandwidth or based on total usage (or both), but not based on protocols or who you're trying to connect to. They can charge you more for more Mbs. They can charge you more because you use more total GB a month. They can't charge you more because you want to use Bittorrent or access a competitor's website.
You may well be right, and it that case I think the paper's analysis would need revision. Under the current methods for producing multicore CPU's though, this will be a problem. Hence the paper.
SGI runs Single System Image Linux systems with over 1000 cores, that's not the problem. If you read the article it seems that they aren't talking about the number of cores in the system, they're talking about the number of cores on a chip. Multicore chips use shared caches. the problem is that the algorithms used to handle CPU caching don't scale to really huge numbers of cores sharing the cache in a single chip. Having 4X16 core chips will work fine, having a single 64 core chip will present difficulties. At least that's how I understand the article.
I thought this as well, but after more carefully reading the article, I *think* I see what the problem is. It's not really a problem with large numbers of cores in a system, so much as a problem with large numbers of cores on a chip. Since the multicore chips share caches (level 2 cache is shared, level 1 cache isn't IIRC, but I could be wrong) it's actually cache memory where the issue lies. I've worked on single system image SGI systems with 512 cores, but those systems were actually 256 dual core chips. That works fine, and assuming well written SMP code performance scales as you'd expect with number of cores.
She's home now with her parents, so the doctors must think she has a pretty good chance. They don't usually let premies out of the NICU till they feel comfortable that they are no more or less likely than a normal baby to die. Baring the things that occasionally kill babies ( friend of mine's daughter got meningitis at three days old. She was perfectly healthy at birth, but almost didn't make it through her first week of life.) seems as though she'll be fine.
As opposed to buying other consumer electronics "made in sweatshops by people paid so little they choose to commit suicide so their family can get the little bit of death benefit cash." That company makes most of the mobile devices on the market, not just the iPhone. Not that I'm defending the situation, but acting like Apple has some kind of monopoly on Chinese sweat shop labor is disingenuous at best. The reality is that the western world wants cheap products and right now countries like China and India are willing to work people to death in order to provide those cheap products. What needs to happen is that we all need to accept that all our gear *should* cost 50-100% more than it does, so the people making it and providing the raw materials can having a living wage. Any takers?
The only thing worse than bad press is no press. OK, having *all* bad press isn't a good thing (it probably means your product sucks); but having *lots* of press, as long as it's mostly good or reasonably balanced, is much better than having a little bit of good press. "Haters gonna hate", so no one is too chuffed about the occasional bad review or article. It just shows that you're popular enough for people to go out of their way to hate you.
Meh. You're right adn you're wrong. Microsoft certainly isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and they do in fact dominate the business market in PCs and (to a slightly lesser extent) servers. This isn't in doubt. On the other hand they're showing themselves increasingly unable to adapt to changing market conditions. They were famously late on the web (and had to bludgeon Netscape to death to win), their attempts to me-too their way into search, social media, cloud computing, game systems, etc have met with various degree of success; but nearly universally cost more than they make. Most importantly right now, they can't get a mobile platform going.
There are strong indicators that smart phones and tablets are going to be what PCs were 15-20 years ago. Not that they are going to replace PCs (not yet anyway, who knows with advances in miniaturization what a decade from now will look like), but they are the big ticket, high margin items that everyone wants and is willing to pay for. PCs are commodities. You have the fridge, the washer/dryer, the TV, and the computer. (Before I get flamed that computers are bigger ticket than mobile devices: yes, but notice "big ticket, high margin")
For right now, this merely means that Microsoft is missing out on the cash cow of the moment. Kinda sucks, but they make plenty of money on other things so not the end of the world. But what *about* ten years from now? When these micro devices get the power and peripherals they would need to be a serious threat to PCs and laptops on the desktop. History has shown that smaller and slightly less powerful often wins out over larger and slightly more powerful when it comes to technology.
IBM wasn't worried about PCs. They were toys. Until they weren't. Everyone said laptops were great for a short term "I have to be mobile" scenario; but when you were at your desk you wanted a "real" computer with some power. Then suddenly laptops *were* real computers, and people were using them as primary systems. Sometimes "docked" to peripherals, sometimes not.
Your comparison to IBM is apt. Microsoft is in *precisely* the position that IBM was in at the dawn of the PC. They made the wrong decisions, went the wrong directions, and it very nearly killed them. Will mobiles make have the same kind of long term trajectory as PCs? Will Microsoft make the same mistakes as IBM? I don't know the answer to either question, but I do know the IBM's position seemed just as unassailable once. I don't think Microsoft is going anywhere, don't get me wrong. PCs didn't kill IBM, and (even if they don't pull a rabbit out their collective hats and actually get in the game) mobile won't kill Microsoft. For all that they're a great company though, IBM is not the behemoth they used to be. Someday, perhaps someday soon, Microsoft won't be either.
So wait... the thing digests people, but provides them with sufficient nutrients to survive while it does so? Our bodies are not perfectly efficient, over any length of time we need *more* calories and nutrients than we contain in order to function. This things eats animals in order to attain a net *loss* of nutrition? By that logic you'll be partially digested over the week it takes to starve itself to death trying to keep you alive. Agony perhaps, but short term.
Usually both. It's a state/local crime to posses it, and a federal crime if they can prove you moved it across state lines (including electronically). In this case it's a UK law though, because that's where this particular story happened. I'd venture to guess that there are a *very* small number places in the Western World where it's not a crime, if any at all.
OK, been reading through all this stuff and I think it's time to chime in. So far as I can tell, the boogey man here is that China will: a) build a more powerful Supercomputer than the most powerful one we have, b) build a bigger data center than ORNL to house supercomputers, or c) both. As you point out, there are lots of things you can do with HPC assets, and having them is good. Here's where things begin to break down in the doomsday scenario. ORNL is one of a dozen or so similar sites in the US.
None of them is *quite* as large as ORNL (right now.. they actually switch around which is the biggest and best fairly regularly), but any one of them would be the biggest HPC site in the world if ORNL went away tomorrow. If China builds a bigger site than ORNL, will it be bigger than ORNL *and* Lawrence Livermore combined? How about if we add in Argonne? The DOE alone has like 5 of the top ten performing computers in the world. Then there's all of the DoD sites. We don't have to have the *fastest* or *biggest* computer in the world in order to have *way more computing power* than anyone else.
Currently we have 43 (if I counted right) of the top 100 supercomputers in the world here in the US, and 8 of the top 10. While having the single biggest is nice, not one is even close to us in total HPC assets. If we stopped buying HPC assets completely, right now, in two or three years we *might* be getting to the point where someone else was close.
But how do you stop that, and still maintain those people's rights? They have a right to speak (not necessarily on Slashdot, which is a private service, but certainly to Congress or Parliament). They have a right let someone tell them what to say. They have a right to paid for services. I'm sure if you pinned those people down, they'd swear by whatever deity they worship that they really believe whatever drek they're spouting at the moment. Can you prove otherwise?
I have an idea that that part came after Jesus was a pincushion. A reasonably careful reading of the Bible shows two Jesuses. The Hippie, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" Jesus and the "Hey God is my Daddy, do what I say" Jesus. I suspect that the real Jesus (or possibly real men who were amalgamated into Jesus) was the first. The second came when a bunch of people realized that they could sell Jesus(A) as a product to buy them the power of Jesus(B). This idea is reinforced by the fact that when Jesus (the character) actually speaks, he normally sounds more like Jesus(A). When he is spoken for, he normally sounds more like Jesus(B).
There's legitimate wisdom in the New Testament. You just have to fish for it a bit.
It is a question of opinions as the OP has worded it. I said from the get go that I agree that software patents are bad. That's not the point. OP is implying that people who voice opinion that he considers "corporatist" should somehow have those opinion treated differently in the public debate than those who are voicing "pure" opinions. That's wrong. Just because I have the opinion that, say, helping Microsoft maintain it's monopoly position is a great idea; doesn't mean you can shut me up because you think Microsoft's monopoly is bad. I might be wrong, but I'm allowed to wrong. The freedom to be wrong is one of the many freedoms we enjoy. The fact that I hold this opinion because I hold Microsoft stock is irrelevant. It might color how others view my opinion (since I have an obvious conflict of interest on the matter), but it can't influence my ability to peddle the opinion to anyone I see fit.
This doesn't mean we should give a stage to every opinion on the face of the Earth, but corporations can afford to build their own stages, and we shouldn't be able to stop them from doing so.
Your argument is really as silly as the corporations that claim every pirated copy as a lost sale though. Just as they cannot reasonably claim that every person who pirated the software or other media would have bought it, you can't reasonably claim that every person who pirated it *wouldn't* have bought it. The reality is in the middle. Some people who pirate do so because they can't afford to buy, or to get their hands on things that they otherwise wouldn't have considered worth the money. Other people people pirate to save a few bucks that they can now spend on beer instead of a new album. I know that when I was younger and did my share of pirating, I would have bought at least a reasonable percentage of the stuff had I not been able to get it for free.
"Potential profit" as the media corporations use it is indeed bullshit, but that doesn't mean that piracy doesn't cost some sales. I can personally vouch for the fact that it does.
Are you mad? Most of those thing were critical to the rise of the middle class. Without the power vacuums created by the Plague and the Reformation their would never have been anywhere for the Middle Class to go. Who do you think bought the books that Gutenberg originally published? A bunch of poor illiterate peasants who hoped that someone would come along to teach them to read 'em? I'm not denying that the printing press was one of the great inventions of history, nor that history would have been dramatically different without it; but to give it sole and unswerving credit for the raise of the middle class is ludicrous.
Patent advocates represent their corporations, because it is the corporations that own the patents, not the advocates themselves. Corporations are legal persons but are not citizens. There is no equivalence there.
In this instance, I believe patent advocates are only looking out for themselves, and are working against the interests of the public -- so it's fair and prudent to set them apart.
Both of these quotes seem to suggest otherwise. You would give secondary status to opinions which, in your opinion, "are working against the interests of the public", or belong to the corporations. It doesn't matter that these people are looking out for themselves or their corporation, their opinions cannot be considered of lesser value (in the sense of rights or public forum, obviously I agree with you that they have lower intellectual value). If I'm a patents lobbyist, I may only be saying what I am paid to say. I may also passionately believe what I am saying, and, hey, bonus, someone is paying to me to follow my bliss.
Not all patents are owned by corporations, not all advocates for the patent system are corporate shills, not all corporate shills are actually being dishonest (actively dishonest, they may be spouting incorrect information, but they may well really believe it). For this simple reason it's *not* "fair and prudent to set them apart."
So apparently the Crusades (which expanded the mind of many people who previously would never have been off the manor), the Bubonic Plague (Which killed off so many people that there were power vacuums allowing people to rise in status), the Reformation (which just did all kinds of things, including both of the things listed above, plus creating a huge whole in the social order by removing the Church), or the dozens of the other factors involved were actually unimportant? Damn. You should be a historian. They'd love to hear they missed such a simple and obvious reason for the rise of a middle class.
His uncompromising attitude on issues which cannot be resolved without compromise make him an extremist. There is no possible way we'll ever live in a world of pure free software in Stallman's lifetime. He can never win. Any reasonable outside observer can see this. The work he wants to do is the work of decades or even centuries spent readjusting attitudes and gaining mindshare. He could move things in that direction if he were willing to take small bites, make compromises here and there to advance the overall agenda, etc. He's not.
He's taken an extreme (for our society) viewpoint and refuses to give any ground. He refuses to say "Hey, that's a nice move in the right direction, we should do more of that." It's always "Well, that might be a small step in the right direction, but fix the rest of it. Now! Immediately. Make it the way I want it!"
I'm not saying, per se, that he's wrong. It's possible that he's made more progress this way than he would of with compromise. I don't know. That's not really the point. He's taken an "extreme" position and refuses to budge in any way. That sounds like the definition of "extremist" to me. We associate violence with extremism (because most people who get violent about a matter are extremists), but not all extremists are violent.
Ok, with the caveat that I dislike software patents and (on this one point at least) agree with Stallman, your argument here is bullshit. If I legitimately believe that software patents are a good thing, regardless of whether I think this because it will help me personally or not, then I have exactly as much right to present this opinion as Stallman has to present his opinion. To say otherwise is simply to advocating the reduction of the right of free expression down to "I think people should have the right to express any opinion I agree with". Some people believe that software patents are in the public good. Some people believe that corporate interests intersect with public interest (or at least do so more often than you believe they do). Telling those people to shut up simply because their opinion on what is in the "public interest" differs from yours is, in fact, the heart of censorship and the opposite of the freedom you claim to want.
tl;dr People have the right to say that they should have fewer rights. You can't reasonably argue for "freedom" and then say that some people's opinions should get legal primacy over other people's opinions.
SciFy didn't knowingly and with full cognizance of the possible consequences deliberately put the episode on my DVR. There's a huge difference between passive content being recorded by a device which happens to be a receiver of that content, and me talking directly to your recording device.
Phone messages left on *my* answering machine (or more likely voice mail) are *my* property. You're automatically consenting to recording, because that's what voice mail *does*. That's not even effective weaseling. The photo's maybe. Depends who took them and whether Buckeyballs has standing to request their take down (fair use or not). If the photos are AP news pics or something, then Buckeyballs doesn't own them and can't demand their take down. Just because a picture is *of* you doesn't mean you own it. If Zen Magnets took the photos from the Buckeyballs website, it's reasonable that the company has at least some standing to ask for their removal. It's probably fair use, and likely would fail, but at the least it couldn't be considered abusive.
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While I agree the story wasn't all that great, the idea was that they weren't hiking distance. She traveled for decades. Hence the grown up dragon and her being old. How you can travel for decades and not realize it, how come there are villainous marauders lurking in mountains so inaccessible that no caravan or other objects of value would ever get there (and why he was alone), and what the old man was doing up there are all better questions in my opinion.
Which is exactly what I said... I was responding to a guy that seemed to think it was about charging everyone equally, and pointing out that he was wrong. In fact, two more sentences on in my post you quoted was:
"Not because you went to Youtube, when your ISP has a deal with Hulu, no. But because you used more resources than your neighbor, sure. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with whether you're charged for speed, total bandwidth used, or both. It's about preventing you from being charged extra to use certain protocols or access certain destinations."
I can see not reading the whole thing if it was a wall of text, but my post was a short five sentence paragraph.
Because *you* are using bandwidth. If *you* use more bandwidth than the guy next to you, it's reasonable to think that *you* pay more. Not because you used the wrong protocol, no. Not because you went to Youtube, when your ISP has a deal with Hulu, no. But because you used more resources than your neighbor, sure. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with whether you're charged for speed, total bandwidth used, or both. It's about preventing you from being charged extra to use certain protocols or access certain destinations.
Actually I don't see any problem with charging consumers more per se. If I use twice the bandwidth that my neighbor does, then there's some logic that I pay twice as much. What's objectionable isn't that they charge more for using more bandwidth, but that they charge more for applications that they assume will use more bandwidth. Example:
I have an Internet connection. I use it for e-mail and web browsing (low bandwidth activities) on a moderate scale, but a few times a month I torrent something (Blizzard uses torrents for it's game updates, Linux distros, etc). While I occasionally use this "high bandwidth application" my overall usage is rather low (say 5-7 GB a month).
My neighbor has the same Internet connection I do. He uses only "low bandwidth applications", but he uses them *constantly*. Say he's a teenager and it's summer vacation. He's *always* doing something on the 'Net. He downloads multiple small files (often at the same time), but does so over low bandwidth (theoretically) protocols like http and ftp. In the end he uses way more bandwidth in a given month than me. 25-30 GB.
Under the types of rules that Internet companies want to see, I would be potentially charged more than my neighbor. Because I use a "high bandwidth service" (despite that I don't use it much and it doesn't actually add up to that much bandwidth), and he doesn't (despite that he actually uses far more bandwidth because of his sheer volume of activity).
A big part of the problem here is that Americans have gotten used to "unlimited Internet". No ISP wants to be the first to say "you pay by the GB", because they know that they'll get their lunches eaten by all the "unlimited" services. So rather than limit the actual bandwidth people are allowed to use (or charging a metered rate), they attempt to offer "unlimited" service while at the same time demonizing certain protocols and applications and trying to charge more for those. This allows them to claim that you can use the network as much as you want, while at the same time curtailing the use of protocols that are most likely to stress the network.
Net Neutrality isn't about you getting free Internetz. It's about companies being forced to sell unrestricted access to the network (on the protocol and application level). They can sell packages based on bandwidth or based on total usage (or both), but not based on protocols or who you're trying to connect to. They can charge you more for more Mbs. They can charge you more because you use more total GB a month. They can't charge you more because you want to use Bittorrent or access a competitor's website.
You may well be right, and it that case I think the paper's analysis would need revision. Under the current methods for producing multicore CPU's though, this will be a problem. Hence the paper.
SGI runs Single System Image Linux systems with over 1000 cores, that's not the problem. If you read the article it seems that they aren't talking about the number of cores in the system, they're talking about the number of cores on a chip. Multicore chips use shared caches. the problem is that the algorithms used to handle CPU caching don't scale to really huge numbers of cores sharing the cache in a single chip. Having 4X16 core chips will work fine, having a single 64 core chip will present difficulties. At least that's how I understand the article.
I thought this as well, but after more carefully reading the article, I *think* I see what the problem is. It's not really a problem with large numbers of cores in a system, so much as a problem with large numbers of cores on a chip. Since the multicore chips share caches (level 2 cache is shared, level 1 cache isn't IIRC, but I could be wrong) it's actually cache memory where the issue lies. I've worked on single system image SGI systems with 512 cores, but those systems were actually 256 dual core chips. That works fine, and assuming well written SMP code performance scales as you'd expect with number of cores.
She's home now with her parents, so the doctors must think she has a pretty good chance. They don't usually let premies out of the NICU till they feel comfortable that they are no more or less likely than a normal baby to die. Baring the things that occasionally kill babies ( friend of mine's daughter got meningitis at three days old. She was perfectly healthy at birth, but almost didn't make it through her first week of life.) seems as though she'll be fine.
As opposed to buying other consumer electronics "made in sweatshops by people paid so little they choose to commit suicide so their family can get the little bit of death benefit cash." That company makes most of the mobile devices on the market, not just the iPhone. Not that I'm defending the situation, but acting like Apple has some kind of monopoly on Chinese sweat shop labor is disingenuous at best. The reality is that the western world wants cheap products and right now countries like China and India are willing to work people to death in order to provide those cheap products. What needs to happen is that we all need to accept that all our gear *should* cost 50-100% more than it does, so the people making it and providing the raw materials can having a living wage. Any takers?
The only thing worse than bad press is no press. OK, having *all* bad press isn't a good thing (it probably means your product sucks); but having *lots* of press, as long as it's mostly good or reasonably balanced, is much better than having a little bit of good press. "Haters gonna hate", so no one is too chuffed about the occasional bad review or article. It just shows that you're popular enough for people to go out of their way to hate you.
Meh. You're right adn you're wrong. Microsoft certainly isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and they do in fact dominate the business market in PCs and (to a slightly lesser extent) servers. This isn't in doubt. On the other hand they're showing themselves increasingly unable to adapt to changing market conditions. They were famously late on the web (and had to bludgeon Netscape to death to win), their attempts to me-too their way into search, social media, cloud computing, game systems, etc have met with various degree of success; but nearly universally cost more than they make. Most importantly right now, they can't get a mobile platform going.
There are strong indicators that smart phones and tablets are going to be what PCs were 15-20 years ago. Not that they are going to replace PCs (not yet anyway, who knows with advances in miniaturization what a decade from now will look like), but they are the big ticket, high margin items that everyone wants and is willing to pay for. PCs are commodities. You have the fridge, the washer/dryer, the TV, and the computer. (Before I get flamed that computers are bigger ticket than mobile devices: yes, but notice "big ticket, high margin")
For right now, this merely means that Microsoft is missing out on the cash cow of the moment. Kinda sucks, but they make plenty of money on other things so not the end of the world. But what *about* ten years from now? When these micro devices get the power and peripherals they would need to be a serious threat to PCs and laptops on the desktop. History has shown that smaller and slightly less powerful often wins out over larger and slightly more powerful when it comes to technology.
IBM wasn't worried about PCs. They were toys. Until they weren't. Everyone said laptops were great for a short term "I have to be mobile" scenario; but when you were at your desk you wanted a "real" computer with some power. Then suddenly laptops *were* real computers, and people were using them as primary systems. Sometimes "docked" to peripherals, sometimes not.
Your comparison to IBM is apt. Microsoft is in *precisely* the position that IBM was in at the dawn of the PC. They made the wrong decisions, went the wrong directions, and it very nearly killed them. Will mobiles make have the same kind of long term trajectory as PCs? Will Microsoft make the same mistakes as IBM? I don't know the answer to either question, but I do know the IBM's position seemed just as unassailable once. I don't think Microsoft is going anywhere, don't get me wrong. PCs didn't kill IBM, and (even if they don't pull a rabbit out their collective hats and actually get in the game) mobile won't kill Microsoft. For all that they're a great company though, IBM is not the behemoth they used to be. Someday, perhaps someday soon, Microsoft won't be either.
So wait... the thing digests people, but provides them with sufficient nutrients to survive while it does so? Our bodies are not perfectly efficient, over any length of time we need *more* calories and nutrients than we contain in order to function. This things eats animals in order to attain a net *loss* of nutrition? By that logic you'll be partially digested over the week it takes to starve itself to death trying to keep you alive. Agony perhaps, but short term.
Usually both. It's a state/local crime to posses it, and a federal crime if they can prove you moved it across state lines (including electronically). In this case it's a UK law though, because that's where this particular story happened. I'd venture to guess that there are a *very* small number places in the Western World where it's not a crime, if any at all.
OK, been reading through all this stuff and I think it's time to chime in. So far as I can tell, the boogey man here is that China will: a) build a more powerful Supercomputer than the most powerful one we have, b) build a bigger data center than ORNL to house supercomputers, or c) both. As you point out, there are lots of things you can do with HPC assets, and having them is good. Here's where things begin to break down in the doomsday scenario. ORNL is one of a dozen or so similar sites in the US.
None of them is *quite* as large as ORNL (right now.. they actually switch around which is the biggest and best fairly regularly), but any one of them would be the biggest HPC site in the world if ORNL went away tomorrow. If China builds a bigger site than ORNL, will it be bigger than ORNL *and* Lawrence Livermore combined? How about if we add in Argonne? The DOE alone has like 5 of the top ten performing computers in the world. Then there's all of the DoD sites. We don't have to have the *fastest* or *biggest* computer in the world in order to have *way more computing power* than anyone else.
Currently we have 43 (if I counted right) of the top 100 supercomputers in the world here in the US, and 8 of the top 10. While having the single biggest is nice, not one is even close to us in total HPC assets. If we stopped buying HPC assets completely, right now, in two or three years we *might* be getting to the point where someone else was close.
But how do you stop that, and still maintain those people's rights? They have a right to speak (not necessarily on Slashdot, which is a private service, but certainly to Congress or Parliament). They have a right let someone tell them what to say. They have a right to paid for services. I'm sure if you pinned those people down, they'd swear by whatever deity they worship that they really believe whatever drek they're spouting at the moment. Can you prove otherwise?
I have an idea that that part came after Jesus was a pincushion. A reasonably careful reading of the Bible shows two Jesuses. The Hippie, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" Jesus and the "Hey God is my Daddy, do what I say" Jesus. I suspect that the real Jesus (or possibly real men who were amalgamated into Jesus) was the first. The second came when a bunch of people realized that they could sell Jesus(A) as a product to buy them the power of Jesus(B). This idea is reinforced by the fact that when Jesus (the character) actually speaks, he normally sounds more like Jesus(A). When he is spoken for, he normally sounds more like Jesus(B).
There's legitimate wisdom in the New Testament. You just have to fish for it a bit.
It is a question of opinions as the OP has worded it. I said from the get go that I agree that software patents are bad. That's not the point. OP is implying that people who voice opinion that he considers "corporatist" should somehow have those opinion treated differently in the public debate than those who are voicing "pure" opinions. That's wrong. Just because I have the opinion that, say, helping Microsoft maintain it's monopoly position is a great idea; doesn't mean you can shut me up because you think Microsoft's monopoly is bad. I might be wrong, but I'm allowed to wrong. The freedom to be wrong is one of the many freedoms we enjoy. The fact that I hold this opinion because I hold Microsoft stock is irrelevant. It might color how others view my opinion (since I have an obvious conflict of interest on the matter), but it can't influence my ability to peddle the opinion to anyone I see fit.
This doesn't mean we should give a stage to every opinion on the face of the Earth, but corporations can afford to build their own stages, and we shouldn't be able to stop them from doing so.
Your argument is really as silly as the corporations that claim every pirated copy as a lost sale though. Just as they cannot reasonably claim that every person who pirated the software or other media would have bought it, you can't reasonably claim that every person who pirated it *wouldn't* have bought it. The reality is in the middle. Some people who pirate do so because they can't afford to buy, or to get their hands on things that they otherwise wouldn't have considered worth the money. Other people people pirate to save a few bucks that they can now spend on beer instead of a new album. I know that when I was younger and did my share of pirating, I would have bought at least a reasonable percentage of the stuff had I not been able to get it for free.
"Potential profit" as the media corporations use it is indeed bullshit, but that doesn't mean that piracy doesn't cost some sales. I can personally vouch for the fact that it does.
Are you mad? Most of those thing were critical to the rise of the middle class. Without the power vacuums created by the Plague and the Reformation their would never have been anywhere for the Middle Class to go. Who do you think bought the books that Gutenberg originally published? A bunch of poor illiterate peasants who hoped that someone would come along to teach them to read 'em? I'm not denying that the printing press was one of the great inventions of history, nor that history would have been dramatically different without it; but to give it sole and unswerving credit for the raise of the middle class is ludicrous.
Patent advocates represent their corporations, because it is the corporations that own the patents, not the advocates themselves. Corporations are legal persons but are not citizens. There is no equivalence there.
In this instance, I believe patent advocates are only looking out for themselves, and are working against the interests of the public -- so it's fair and prudent to set them apart.
Both of these quotes seem to suggest otherwise. You would give secondary status to opinions which, in your opinion, "are working against the interests of the public", or belong to the corporations. It doesn't matter that these people are looking out for themselves or their corporation, their opinions cannot be considered of lesser value (in the sense of rights or public forum, obviously I agree with you that they have lower intellectual value). If I'm a patents lobbyist, I may only be saying what I am paid to say. I may also passionately believe what I am saying, and, hey, bonus, someone is paying to me to follow my bliss.
Not all patents are owned by corporations, not all advocates for the patent system are corporate shills, not all corporate shills are actually being dishonest (actively dishonest, they may be spouting incorrect information, but they may well really believe it). For this simple reason it's *not* "fair and prudent to set them apart."
So apparently the Crusades (which expanded the mind of many people who previously would never have been off the manor), the Bubonic Plague (Which killed off so many people that there were power vacuums allowing people to rise in status), the Reformation (which just did all kinds of things, including both of the things listed above, plus creating a huge whole in the social order by removing the Church), or the dozens of the other factors involved were actually unimportant? Damn. You should be a historian. They'd love to hear they missed such a simple and obvious reason for the rise of a middle class.
His uncompromising attitude on issues which cannot be resolved without compromise make him an extremist. There is no possible way we'll ever live in a world of pure free software in Stallman's lifetime. He can never win. Any reasonable outside observer can see this. The work he wants to do is the work of decades or even centuries spent readjusting attitudes and gaining mindshare. He could move things in that direction if he were willing to take small bites, make compromises here and there to advance the overall agenda, etc. He's not.
He's taken an extreme (for our society) viewpoint and refuses to give any ground. He refuses to say "Hey, that's a nice move in the right direction, we should do more of that." It's always "Well, that might be a small step in the right direction, but fix the rest of it. Now! Immediately. Make it the way I want it!"
I'm not saying, per se, that he's wrong. It's possible that he's made more progress this way than he would of with compromise. I don't know. That's not really the point. He's taken an "extreme" position and refuses to budge in any way. That sounds like the definition of "extremist" to me. We associate violence with extremism (because most people who get violent about a matter are extremists), but not all extremists are violent.
Ok, with the caveat that I dislike software patents and (on this one point at least) agree with Stallman, your argument here is bullshit. If I legitimately believe that software patents are a good thing, regardless of whether I think this because it will help me personally or not, then I have exactly as much right to present this opinion as Stallman has to present his opinion. To say otherwise is simply to advocating the reduction of the right of free expression down to "I think people should have the right to express any opinion I agree with". Some people believe that software patents are in the public good. Some people believe that corporate interests intersect with public interest (or at least do so more often than you believe they do). Telling those people to shut up simply because their opinion on what is in the "public interest" differs from yours is, in fact, the heart of censorship and the opposite of the freedom you claim to want.
tl;dr People have the right to say that they should have fewer rights. You can't reasonably argue for "freedom" and then say that some people's opinions should get legal primacy over other people's opinions.
SciFy didn't knowingly and with full cognizance of the possible consequences deliberately put the episode on my DVR. There's a huge difference between passive content being recorded by a device which happens to be a receiver of that content, and me talking directly to your recording device.
Phone messages left on *my* answering machine (or more likely voice mail) are *my* property. You're automatically consenting to recording, because that's what voice mail *does*. That's not even effective weaseling. The photo's maybe. Depends who took them and whether Buckeyballs has standing to request their take down (fair use or not). If the photos are AP news pics or something, then Buckeyballs doesn't own them and can't demand their take down. Just because a picture is *of* you doesn't mean you own it. If Zen Magnets took the photos from the Buckeyballs website, it's reasonable that the company has at least some standing to ask for their removal. It's probably fair use, and likely would fail, but at the least it couldn't be considered abusive.