Denmark has both laws against hate speachs, and more appropriate, laws against blasphemy.
It is just that these cartoons are really, really mild compared to Danish cartoon traditions. Far worse depictions of Jesus has been published with no legal action as a result.
> There are few other industries where so many talented people are willing to work for free.
Music and Sport being two of them.
Not that "open source" does not equal "working for free". The vast majority of open source code that people are actually using, is created by people who get paid competitive salaries.
I don't really care about the rights to Disneys creations. It is all the obscure (and not so obscure) books that are "out of print" I care about. I'd love to be able to legally download and read those books for free, or buy a print edition of them from another publisher.
If there was a reasonable fee, say US$ 12.000 for each 12 years extension of the copyright, a lot of these would fall into the public domain.
As long as we are talking local rules of conduct rather than criminal code, leaving room for interpretation by the local librarian would be far better in most cases.
It is CYA, a basic survival strategy for surviving in an enterprise environment. Go with the flock, don't stand out, and you won't get fired. It used to be the main argument for buying IBM, now it is the main argument for buying Microsoft.
It is the same reason "analyst reports" are so popular in the enterprise. Nobody believes them but they help promote the number one goal in that environment of fear, namely avoiding personal responsibility at any cost.
Once someone figure out how to build a corporate culture that does not build on fear, they are going to crush the competition.
It is about the total energy supply, where coal is much larger (buth currently and in supplies), and nuclear power has more potential for the future.
Even if oil production has peaked, all it means is that oil prices will continue to rise, making the already existing and competitive alternates even more competitive. Some of the alternatives are practically unlimited in supply, which mean they will effectively set an upper limit on the oil price, until opil become so limited that we no longer would dream of just using it for energy.
A worst case scenario would be that your next car will be electrical. Is that really so scary?
Spam as UCE is a recent invention. Before the term spam was used for email, it was used for Usenet postings. And before that, for various online games (for behavior that today might be called flooding).
Spam is basically "the same many times" as in the Python scetch.
The "commercial email" only became part of the description because most spam is both commercial an email. So newbies will naturally believe that is part of the definition.
Nobody said he was indispensible. And if Bloomberg is the kind of boss that fire a random bottom-feeder for playing Solitaire, he will also be the kind of boss who will fire the bottom-feeders manager, if he choose to stand up for the bottom-feeder.
Quickly, Bloomberg will find that all his actions are perfect, because nobody in the system will dare critize them.
This kind of top-level micro-management by fear can actually work, if the boss is a maniac. Which, from your description, does sound like the case.
Hopefully, the press will watching him carefully, because when this kindof management go wrong, it goes really wrong. We had a mayor here who left his small town (30.000 citizens) with a depth of 200 million dollars, after some ambitious ideas had gone wrong. Nobody had dared stop him, before the press finally unfolded the story.
The price of an electronic device can be divided into a fixed development cost for the first unit, plus a marginal cost for each additional unit. The fixed development cost is usually spread out over each "expected" sale for an initial period. Which is why the cost fall drastically after that period.
It is quite likely that the PS3 will be sold for a price above the marginal cost, especially since Sony is co-developer of both the CELL processor and the blue-ray disc technology. Since they have alreaady paid directly for the development of these technologies, they will not have to pay for it again through a unit license fee. Unlike other providers of CELL or blue-ray based devices.
They will still have to regain the development cost for all three technologies, most likely in game licensing fees.
A BASIC interpreter, and a poor one[*] at that, counts as "hardcore programming" these days?
I hacked around a bit in his BASIC interpreter back in those days, and I was less than impressed. GOTO in MS BASIC was O(n). Anyone who has ever programmer BASIC should know that GOTO is the key command to run fast in that language. Just about anyone else, working under similar constraints got that right.
MS BASIC is really a testament to Bill Gates marketing skills, not his programming skills, since he actually managed to sell that piece of junk
I ignored Wikipedia in the start, convinced that it couldn't work.
Then I started being refered to Wikipedia as the source for information on various obscure subjects more and more often.
And now I do a bit of editing myself, when I know something in an area that is not that popular.
There are a few kooks, and some editors clearly have emotional problems that ought to keep them away from collaboratory projets. But the vast majority of people and edits are constructive. I believe nine out of ten edits to text I have written have been for the better. I had not expected that. This is much better than any other well-known place I have seen on the net, including/..
I even did a few minor edits to the Goerge W. Bush article, without getting dragged into a figth.
Wikipedia works better than it has any right to do.
So the old pixar Shareholders are now Disney shareholders. And since the Disney original stock was rather diluted, the new stockholders from Pixar hold a lot of power.
The Catolic Church has been pro-science for a long time. They are smart enough to incorporate science instead of fighting it, and reserving the fight to the moral and ethical questions. Here is has a consistent pro-life view, which goes across the left/right schism of secular politics. The church is anti-war, anti-death penalty, and anti-birth control (other than abstinence).
The anti-scientific sentiments come from protestant communities, mostly from people who have neither a formal theological nor scientific background. Those part of the protestants where there is tradition for listening to priests who have an academic training are much less inclined to believe that a purely "literal" reading of the Bible is possible in any meaningful sense.
A lie maintained by a huge conspiracy, ivolving all the dog breeders.
Not to mention cat and horse breeders, farm animal breeders, crop breeders, and garden plant breeders.
Without the lie, all of these people would out of a job!
It is a little known fact that it is the success of this conspiracy that gave the government the idea to fake a moon landing (to draw attention away from Vietnam), and later the greenhouse effect on global climate (inorder to justify increased gasoline taxes).
The mastermind between all this is Elvis, who started by faking his own death, with the help of our alien friends.
No, but you are agreeing that at some point in time, there were fish that decided to become amphibious, which at some point in time, grew into lizards, which at some point in time, grew into mammals and birds, which at some point in time eventually grew into apes and then humans.
No, as stated, that would be Lamarckism, inheritance of acquired traits.
You are, however, required to believe that your ancestors are increasingly different from you the further back in time you go, and if you go back millions of generations they may resemble primitive (not modern!) lizards or fish more than they resemble humans, apes or mammals (those three labels still apply to each of us).
I very much doubt that Sony ever expected the AIBO to generate a net profit for the company. The AIBO was from the start a marketing gimmick, intended to generate buzz for the company. As such, it was very successful. But now the idea is no longer new, so it is time to move on to something else.
I expect most of the cost to be in the initial design, but apparently even the marginal cost of the AIBO is higher than the price. Otherwise, why stop production rather than just stop further development?
> A species (chimpanzees, our "closest" relatives, for example) with 21 pairs of > chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs. Do the fossil records indicate critters > with 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4.... pairs of choromosomes?
First: Chimpanzees did never "evolve" into humans, we both share a common ancestor.
Second: We do have humans with half an extra chromosone (xyy males).
Third and most important: Evolution leaves out *a lot*. Really, it is not like evolutionary biology is a closed and finished science that explains everything. We learn new stuff all the time and adapt the models, as in all other active scientific disciplines.
Actually evolution is more of a frame or paradigm, than a theory itself.
> "I was just following orders." > The Defense of Every Immoral Fucker Throughout Who Screwed Some Segment of Humanity
And not the defense Brin gives.
So I don't see how that platitude can be viewed as Insightful, rather than Off-Topic. Unless the moderators don't actually read the blurbs or care about context, and just moderate anything up that seems vaguely familiar and pleasing.
Slashdot Mirror
Denmark has both laws against hate speachs, and more appropriate, laws against blasphemy.
It is just that these cartoons are really, really mild compared to Danish cartoon traditions. Far worse depictions of Jesus has been published with no legal action as a result.
> There are few other industries where so many talented people are willing to work for free.
Music and Sport being two of them.
Not that "open source" does not equal "working for free". The vast majority of open source code that people are actually using, is created by people who get paid competitive salaries.
I don't really care about the rights to Disneys creations. It is all the obscure (and not so obscure) books that are "out of print" I care about. I'd love to be able to legally download and read those books for free, or buy a print edition of them from another publisher.
If there was a reasonable fee, say US$ 12.000 for each 12 years extension of the copyright, a lot of these would fall into the public domain.
Define 'define'.
As long as we are talking local rules of conduct rather than criminal code, leaving room for interpretation by the local librarian would be far better in most cases.
Funny, none of the entities you say the incident was not related to were mentioned by the original poster.
It is CYA, a basic survival strategy for surviving in an enterprise environment. Go with the flock, don't stand out, and you won't get fired. It used to be the main argument for buying IBM, now it is the main argument for buying Microsoft.
It is the same reason "analyst reports" are so popular in the enterprise. Nobody believes them but they help promote the number one goal in that environment of fear, namely avoiding personal responsibility at any cost.
Once someone figure out how to build a corporate culture that does not build on fear, they are going to crush the competition.
It is about the total energy supply, where coal is much larger (buth currently and in supplies), and nuclear power has more potential for the future.
Even if oil production has peaked, all it means is that oil prices will continue to rise, making the already existing and competitive alternates even more competitive. Some of the alternatives are practically unlimited in supply, which mean they will effectively set an upper limit on the oil price, until opil become so limited that we no longer would dream of just using it for energy.
A worst case scenario would be that your next car will be electrical. Is that really so scary?
Spam as UCE is a recent invention. Before the term spam was used for email, it was used for Usenet postings. And before that, for various online games (for behavior that today might be called flooding).
Spam is basically "the same many times" as in the Python scetch.
The "commercial email" only became part of the description because most spam is both commercial an email. So newbies will naturally believe that is part of the definition.
Not all UCE is spam, if you get an UCE send only to you it is not spam. It is still illegal in many places though.
Eh, being seen *is* the mayors job. It may not seem like much of a job to you, but it is, and it is even important.
Firing low-ranking employees is, however, *not* the job of the mayor.
Nobody said he was indispensible. And if Bloomberg is the kind of boss that fire a random bottom-feeder for playing Solitaire, he will also be the kind of boss who will fire the bottom-feeders manager, if he choose to stand up for the bottom-feeder.
Quickly, Bloomberg will find that all his actions are perfect, because nobody in the system will dare critize them.
This kind of top-level micro-management by fear can actually work, if the boss is a maniac. Which, from your description, does sound like the case.
Hopefully, the press will watching him carefully, because when this kindof management go wrong, it goes really wrong. We had a mayor here who left his small town (30.000 citizens) with a depth of 200 million dollars, after some ambitious ideas had gone wrong. Nobody had dared stop him, before the press finally unfolded the story.
And if the question is in the middle of a 6 page EULA that can only be viewed through a fixed 2x2 inch window?
I believe Google has already registered that as a trademark...
The price of an electronic device can be divided into a fixed development cost for the first unit, plus a marginal cost for each additional unit. The fixed development cost is usually spread out over each "expected" sale for an initial period. Which is why the cost fall drastically after that period.
It is quite likely that the PS3 will be sold for a price above the marginal cost, especially since Sony is co-developer of both the CELL processor and the blue-ray disc technology. Since they have alreaady paid directly for the development of these technologies, they will not have to pay for it again through a unit license fee. Unlike other providers of CELL or blue-ray based devices.
They will still have to regain the development cost for all three technologies, most likely in game licensing fees.
A BASIC interpreter, and a poor one[*] at that, counts as "hardcore programming" these days?
I hacked around a bit in his BASIC interpreter back in those days, and I was less than impressed. GOTO in MS BASIC was O(n). Anyone who has ever programmer BASIC should know that GOTO is the key command to run fast in that language. Just about anyone else, working under similar constraints got that right.
MS BASIC is really a testament to Bill Gates marketing skills, not his programming skills, since he actually managed to sell that piece of junk
For old farts the game has become a tired old joke, and the n00bs have never played any of the predecessors.
So I think it will fail due to obscurity, not hype.
I ignored Wikipedia in the start, convinced that it couldn't work.
/..
Then I started being refered to Wikipedia as the source for information on various obscure subjects more and more often.
And now I do a bit of editing myself, when I know something in an area that is not that popular.
There are a few kooks, and some editors clearly have emotional problems that ought to keep them away from collaboratory projets. But the vast majority of people and edits are constructive. I believe nine out of ten edits to text I have written have been for the better. I had not expected that. This is much better than any other well-known place I have seen on the net, including
I even did a few minor edits to the Goerge W. Bush article, without getting dragged into a figth.
Wikipedia works better than it has any right to do.
(The English version that is)
So the old pixar Shareholders are now Disney shareholders. And since the Disney original stock was rather diluted, the new stockholders from Pixar hold a lot of power.
Norway is one of the most religious conuntries in Western Europe.
France would be a good candidate, France is the country that takes secularism most seriously in Europe, especially if we don't count Turkey.
The Catolic Church has been pro-science for a long time. They are smart enough to incorporate science instead of fighting it, and reserving the fight to the moral and ethical questions. Here is has a consistent pro-life view, which goes across the left/right schism of secular politics. The church is anti-war, anti-death penalty, and anti-birth control (other than abstinence).
The anti-scientific sentiments come from protestant communities, mostly from people who have neither a formal theological nor scientific background. Those part of the protestants where there is tradition for listening to priests who have an academic training are much less inclined to believe that a purely "literal" reading of the Bible is possible in any meaningful sense.
A lie maintained by a huge conspiracy, ivolving all the dog breeders.
Not to mention cat and horse breeders, farm animal breeders, crop breeders, and garden plant breeders.
Without the lie, all of these people would out of a job!
It is a little known fact that it is the success of this conspiracy that gave the government the idea to fake a moon landing (to draw attention away from Vietnam), and later the greenhouse effect on global climate (inorder to justify increased gasoline taxes).
The mastermind between all this is Elvis, who started by faking his own death, with the help of our alien friends.
No, as stated, that would be Lamarckism, inheritance of acquired traits.
You are, however, required to believe that your ancestors are increasingly different from you the further back in time you go, and if you go back millions of generations they may resemble primitive (not modern!) lizards or fish more than they resemble humans, apes or mammals (those three labels still apply to each of us).
I very much doubt that Sony ever expected the AIBO to generate a net profit for the company. The AIBO was from the start a marketing gimmick, intended to generate buzz for the company. As such, it was very successful. But now the idea is no longer new, so it is time to move on to something else.
I expect most of the cost to be in the initial design, but apparently even the marginal cost of the AIBO is higher than the price. Otherwise, why stop production rather than just stop further development?
> A species (chimpanzees, our "closest" relatives, for example) with 21 pairs of
> chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs. Do the fossil records indicate critters
> with 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4.... pairs of choromosomes?
First: Chimpanzees did never "evolve" into humans, we both share a common ancestor.
Second: We do have humans with half an extra chromosone (xyy males).
Third and most important: Evolution leaves out *a lot*. Really, it is not like evolutionary biology is a closed and finished science that explains everything. We learn new stuff all the time and adapt the models, as in all other active scientific disciplines.
Actually evolution is more of a frame or paradigm, than a theory itself.
> "I was just following orders."
> The Defense of Every Immoral Fucker Throughout Who Screwed Some Segment of Humanity
And not the defense Brin gives.
So I don't see how that platitude can be viewed as Insightful, rather than Off-Topic. Unless the moderators don't actually read the blurbs or care about context, and just moderate anything up that seems vaguely familiar and pleasing.