While I am not quite that paranoid it is a scary situation. I was listening to a Noam Chomsky monograph from a few years ago where he essentially attacked the concepts of multinational corporation, free trade and the idea that the corperation is a legal entity. According to Mr. Chomsky, these very concepts are anti-constitutional in nature as the erode the individuals civil liberties and make that individual subject to another non-elected _individual_ ( since corporations are people now ). In fact, I got the impression that he truly feels such entities are the largest threat to what we call 'democracy' out there today.
He also went into a whole tirade about free trade and how, what we are presented with as free trade, is not really free trade but free flow of capital which is highly detrimental as it essentially releases these 'individuals' into the global eco-political arena with no responsibilities, ethics or mandate.
Both of these concepts are new entities formed in the last 50-75 years. I wish i remember the title of this lecture, it was really awesome listening. Gotta love public radio while we still have it.. you may or may not agree but its still interesting thinking from a brillant man.
You shoulda seen TEsla Guy at Burning Man this year ( http://www.burningman.com ). He had a big UPS style truck with a large tesla coil mounted on top. He was wearing a cage suit and the truck would drive around with him on top playing with the tesla coil. Your hair would stand up from 15-20 yards away.
It was awesome to see this monstrosity driving around the desert in the middle of the night with the crackling of lightening as the guy sticks his head forward and gets the coil to drop a bolt directly to his head.
Sure, there is a bit of brain drain, but I think that the internet provides a unique opportunity for people. It has a low cost of entry and who you know means nothing. Anyone can step in and go as far as they want regardless of their past history and, many times, experience.
Contrast that to the real world. In order to become a 'High level politcal staffer' you need to at least attend the 'almost right' college, take the right classes and meet the right people. Many times such people are raised around this sort of activity and thus know the 'ins and outs'. Its not something you can just pick up and say 'I am going to do this'. In addition, its not a sport that can attract individualistic intelligent people, I think for the most part that breed strains under the bonds of political life. Look at the few who have tried, the Jerry Browns and the Ross Perot's. They fail. There is a reason for that even though I do not know what it is.
What would internet folk be doing 100 years earlier? Probably operating telegraphs or using printing presses or tinkering with cars and the like. We are people who like the cutting edge whatever it is. If there is a problem to solve, we will solve it. This is a mindset that transcends time. Individualistic and Intelligent people will always find a way to prosper and will always take advantage of the future before the general populace gets wind of it.
We no longer use them. Worse service then NSI, impossible to really allow multiple people to easily work on the domain data, slow global updates that piss our clients off etc etc. For the net savvy its an ok choice, for the marketroids out there its just a tad to delayed.
We stick with NSI for now, we register ~40 domains a month and they do great.
Having a generator option for NT only is ridiculous! My company has been pushing macromedia on a UNIX port of the Generator tools for over a year now to no avail. All of the salesdroids say is 'We will refer your request to the technicians' and thats it.
To bad, generator running on any UNIX would be awesome and increase their market share in a major way. They need to get with it ASAP.
A week ago everyone was flaming me for loving my broker. Now you are all sick with worry and angst because E*Trade is acting fishy.
I placed my order awhile ago( about a week or so ), got confirmation on it early today and didn't lose a wink of sleep or spend time refreshing my browser or any of that nonsense. Plus, my broker doesn't double dip on the commission like E*Trade is reportedly doing ( although this may be bad info from inexperienced people ).
So, I feel my broker has been worth it. My stress level is negligible, I got my stock @ $14 and I did not waste even 10 minutes of my time over the last few weeks dealing with it, a great situation for someone who has very little time to spend.
I call him, I say 'Hi Ken' and we talk about it and then he helps me out and then I get to hang up and know that he is working his ass off for me. This electronic trading stuff is for the birds. Yea, its great if you think you are macho man day trader but to really reach an investment goal and to really not get screwed its good to pay a person to help you.
People pay geeks to make their computers work for them, why are we so hesitant to pay people to help us make our money work for us?
X10 is selling their remote cams for super cheap these days. You can get a whole kit for around $125 or so I believe.
This means that you could put the cams anywhere in the day care without worry. THen you just need RC in cards to capture the content. You can stream etc with these as well as write scripts to capture every nth frame.
Love my A310, picked it up for a song and a danceat CostCo a few weeks ago.
Make sure your tuner is can handle the Digital signal, sure, RCA audio is nice but damn if that Optical cable doesnt make all the difference in the world.
Re:Let's define "dead"...
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 1
Why does everyone keep saying 'MP3 may kill minidisc?'. Different technological concepts.
I can put MP3's on CD, I can put them on MD, I can put them on audio cassette. These are merely storage devices for the format.
Oh, I know why, SlashDot/Linux geeks only listen to music coming from their computers. Well, last time I tried to take my computer running with me I almost broke my back.
Am I the only one that was totally disgusted by the 'enhancements' they put into the first three movies when they re-released them? The CG sucked and was totally out of place. To me, going back and doing anything but 'digitally remastering' these classics was akin to colorizing the old black and white classics. It was disgusting and catered to the kiddies who, if a movie doesnt have at least one complex CG shot, write it off as a waste of time.
I mean come on, he took a dusty, dirty, grimy, scum ridden backwater planet and, in one CG scene, turned it into a cutsie, comical, 'fun for the family' stellar body. It pissed me off, more then the Phantom Menace will ever piss anyone off. The Phantom Menace is something new, let it be what it will be, allow it to evolve into its real form. Marketing, money, great filmaking, whatever that is. But to alter the originals, its disgusting.
Even all of the 'flashback' star wars shows are using the new footage to illustrate the original. That huge new death star explosion sequence is totally out of place and uses colors that don't even _exist_ in the rest of the film. Yet a whole generation will grow up thinking 'thats the way it was'.
Don't fuck with the classics. Oh, but I forget, he needed to get total control over the merchandising rights now that so many years have passed....
I'll build one out, throw Apache on it, write a CGI interface to the player and put it on my network downstairs. Then the world can come and see what is on my playlist and decide what I should listen to next 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Just think, I could log peoples selections and see just how bad everyone's taste actually is.
I'll send a story in once its done and you can all/. my MP3 home stereo equipment. That would be a first.
I bet 90% of the people who bitch and moan about this barely write code themselves.
Also, love the prematurely negative assessment of it before it was read. If someone did the same to Linux the community would be up in arms.
'At first glance, the Open Source Licensing for Linux appears to be an improvement but its waaaay long and I'm no lawyer'. You'd all be spamming that reviewer ASAP and using your/. might to 'Get those anti-open-sourcers'.
Lame bias. Friggin read it before you start putting a negative spin on it. I don't care for any OS over another ( well, I can't use windows at all so thats not true ) but there is an obvious slant here. Apple == Totally NEgative , FreeBSD == Mostly Negative , Linux == Godlike. Its moronic. You folks need to get over this lame ass schoolyard mentality and get on the boat, realize that OS's are NOT one size fits all and to claim so and disparage other OS's because of this view makes you no better then Apple of Microsoft.
Its not about LOC, its about innovation. I've worked with Euro's, taken over projects from Israeli's and Russians and I have got to say, there is a major cultural difference that displays itself even in the code.
The code tends to be a bit over-engineered and top heavy. Where an american programmer might say 'Ok, this gets the job done and is fairly bullet proof, lets go with it' an overseas programmer will go through some friggin amazing hoops to take care of the.0001% occurrance.
At this time also, overseas programmers are just not as innovative for the most part. They are great at 'doing a project' but they are not good at 'coming up with the project from conception to completion' like US programmers are. A US programmer is hired to design, develop, maintain and evolve a system. An overseas programmer is generally hired to write the code.
This is all generalizations from my experience and most likely subject to change, but it has been my experience as invalid as that might be.
Evangelist was a godsend when it started. It provided ammo, solutions and a support group for Apple users who were being pursued with hostile intent. It sounds paranoid but working as a Sys Admin you really got to see the way management would go after Macs for no apparent reason. Evangelists helped fight those sorts of stupid biases and allowed people to get back to work.
Its true though, Evangelist served its purpose. They are few and far between now, no more calls to action ( those were always fun ) and the news is covered better elsewhere. Evangelist is a victim of its own success and I wouldnt have it any other way.
They teach ASM on the motorola chips not for future usefulness but because its the easiest ASM going from what I have seen and heard. That ASM class should be like CS10 ( it was for us, the first class you take ) and serves more to weed out idiots and unmotivated people then anything else.
You may be the most l88t coder on the planet, but this class is teaching you to deal with new concepts on foreign systems. I found it quite entertaining. Go to class and finish up with an A. That A will get you much farther then senseless platform/usefulness arrogance. If you in college to learn applicable skills then your in the wrong place. CS teaches two things : 1) Concepts 2) How to use reference books.
I never finished although I worked very hard at it. In the end the lure of the real world and projects overseas took me away from school and I never returned. I regret not finishing my CS degree yet at the same time I know that the best course of action is the course I find myself on. The opportunities presented to me now have absolutely nothing to do with my education and my lack of a formal degree has not been criticized by anyone from venture capitalists to my business partners.
I think school does different things for different people. There is no real 'universal constant' in terms of what is best. For entrepreneurial people college life will never be enough and they will know that. However, there are tons of people who don't have that drive and whose sole goal is to 'learn that computer stuff' so that they can get a good secure job with benefits. This is especially true as CS becomes more a of a business style major with people involved who have no passion for it and just want the big jobs that everyone says 'knowing computers' will give you. This was the worst things about college, dealing with the fruits who were involved in CS purely for the financial aspects.
That said, the 3 years of college I did attend really taught me a lot and got me started. It served as an introduction to how things are 'supposed' to be done. I have always written code but the concepts and styles I was introduced to in school have left a lasting impact. Its like literature and writing in a way, you have to know whats been done to do your best work and college is a great venue to learn about what others have accomplished and give you building blocks to construct the future with. It showed me a deeper level of understanding and also gave me a map of the landscape. The concepts I was introduced to are concepts that would have never shown their ugly heads to me otherwise and I have benefited greatly from them. The mind boggles at what I would have seen had I finished.
So, different strokes for different folks I think. A lot of it depends on personality type and individual drive/motivation. Me, I enjoyed college and want to finish but I know that my path to success has be driven more by my internal drive, ambition and intelligence then a document I recieved as credit for time spent.
Lastly, I bet Salon wrote this article specifically to get a Slashdot effect going:)
Well MD isnt really a competitor to MP3 I don't think. To me MD replaces the traditional tape recorder. I use mine for a variety of purposes from building work out tapes to recording interviews. My MD is going to BurningMan this year to record interviews and experiences as well as audio trails.
To me MP3 is more specialized in what it does. The MD complements the MP3 format by giving it a different method of storage.
The real competition is Rio vs. MiniDisc and to me the MD wins hands down. I mix MP3/CD/Others sources onto my MD all the time. Its amazingly flexible, sounds fantastic and is super easy to use. The indexing features alone make it worth the money.
So don't buy that this is an MP3 vs. MD issue, its Rio vs. MD and MD will win. Its a much more reasonable format.
More then once I have had the urge to begin contributing to the community. I have written code, documented it and gained authorization for its release. But at the last minute I always hestiate and then stop. Why? I think I fear the fangs of the community. At this point, everywhere I turn its a big flamefest and getting quite tiresome. Its gotten to the point where it seems one has to be some sort of Jedi Master level coder to contribute.On more then a few mailing lists I have seen contributors flamed for their contributions! Flaming someone for GIVING something away. Its incredible.
So, until the kiddies grow up and people realize that the community needs to regain a certain level of acceptance and mellowness I think it will continue to be difficult to bring new people into the fold. Most likely I will contribute in the near future as I feel that my coding skills can pass most of the tests all of the el88t hax0Rs can put it through but its still an issue.
If we can somehow provide an environment of mentoring rather then community flaming I think we would see great advances. I have no idea what form this would take, mailing lists, web sites or whatnot. But some sort of mentoring to ease newbies from users to contributors would really make a huge contribution to advancing the movement.
This sort of thing is not capitalism but something else entirely that I don't even have a word for.
In a true capitalistic society you do not have trademark disputes over non issues such as this and if you want something you BUY it, you don't bully people into not using items.
For example a friend of mine registered webstreetjournal.com a long time ago. The Wall Street Journal contacted him with a cease and desist. They dont WANT the domain they just dont want HIM to use it. This is de facto owenership and needs to be abolished. If you want to OWN something then you should be obligated to AQUIRE it legally By not allowing others to use such domain names you by default own it yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
While I am not quite that paranoid it is a scary situation. I was listening to a Noam Chomsky monograph from a few years ago where he essentially attacked the concepts of multinational corporation, free trade and the idea that the corperation is a legal entity. According to Mr. Chomsky, these very concepts are anti-constitutional in nature as the erode the individuals civil liberties and make that individual subject to another non-elected _individual_ ( since corporations are people now ). In fact, I got the impression that he truly feels such entities are the largest threat to what we call 'democracy' out there today.
He also went into a whole tirade about free trade and how, what we are presented with as free trade, is not really free trade but free flow of capital which is highly detrimental as it essentially releases these 'individuals' into the global eco-political arena with no responsibilities, ethics or mandate.
Both of these concepts are new entities formed in the last 50-75 years. I wish i remember the title of this lecture, it was really awesome listening. Gotta love public radio while we still have it.. you may or may not agree but its still interesting thinking from a brillant man.
You shoulda seen TEsla Guy at Burning Man this year ( http://www.burningman.com ). He had a big UPS style truck with a large tesla coil mounted on top. He was wearing a cage suit and the truck would drive around with him on top playing with the tesla coil. Your hair would stand up from 15-20 yards away.
It was awesome to see this monstrosity driving around the desert in the middle of the night with the crackling of lightening as the guy sticks his head forward and gets the coil to drop a bolt directly to his head.
Sure, there is a bit of brain drain, but I think that the internet provides a unique opportunity for people. It has a low cost of entry and who you know means nothing. Anyone can step in and go as far as they want regardless of their past history and, many times, experience.
Contrast that to the real world. In order to become a 'High level politcal staffer' you need to at least attend the 'almost right' college, take the right classes and meet the right people. Many times such people are raised around this sort of activity and thus know the 'ins and outs'. Its not something you can just pick up and say 'I am going to do this'. In addition, its not a sport that can attract individualistic intelligent people, I think for the most part that breed strains under the bonds of political life. Look at the few who have tried, the Jerry Browns and the Ross Perot's. They fail. There is a reason for that even though I do not know what it is.
What would internet folk be doing 100 years earlier? Probably operating telegraphs or using printing presses or tinkering with cars and the like. We are people who like the cutting edge whatever it is. If there is a problem to solve, we will solve it. This is a mindset that transcends time. Individualistic and Intelligent people will always find a way to prosper and will always take advantage of the future before the general populace gets wind of it.
I repeat, its not real.
Once again, its not real. Its a not so interesting fantasy universe.
We no longer use them. Worse service then NSI, impossible to really allow multiple people to easily work on the domain data, slow global updates that piss our clients off etc etc. For the net savvy its an ok choice, for the marketroids out there its just a tad to delayed.
We stick with NSI for now, we register ~40 domains a month and they do great.
Having a generator option for NT only is ridiculous! My company has been pushing macromedia on a UNIX port of the Generator tools for over a year now to no avail. All of the salesdroids say is 'We will refer your request to the technicians' and thats it.
To bad, generator running on any UNIX would be awesome and increase their market share in a major way. They need to get with it ASAP.
A week ago everyone was flaming me for loving my broker. Now you are all sick with worry and angst because E*Trade is acting fishy.
I placed my order awhile ago( about a week or so ), got confirmation on it early today and didn't lose a wink of sleep or spend time refreshing my browser or any of that nonsense. Plus, my broker doesn't double dip on the commission like E*Trade is reportedly doing ( although this may be bad info from inexperienced people ).
So, I feel my broker has been worth it. My stress level is negligible, I got my stock @ $14 and I did not waste even 10 minutes of my time over the last few weeks dealing with it, a great situation for someone who has very little time to spend.
Thats why I love my broker.
I call him, I say 'Hi Ken' and we talk about it and then he helps me out and then I get to hang up and know that he is working his ass off for me. This electronic trading stuff is for the birds. Yea, its great if you think you are macho man day trader but to really reach an investment goal and to really not get screwed its good to pay a person to help you.
People pay geeks to make their computers work for them, why are we so hesitant to pay people to help us make our money work for us?
X10 is selling their remote cams for super cheap these days. You can get a whole kit for around $125 or so I believe.
This means that you could put the cams anywhere in the day care without worry. THen you just need RC in cards to capture the content. You can stream etc with these as well as write scripts to capture every nth frame.
Love my A310, picked it up for a song and a danceat CostCo a few weeks ago.
Make sure your tuner is can handle the Digital signal, sure, RCA audio is nice but damn if that Optical cable doesnt make all the difference in the world.
Why does everyone keep saying 'MP3 may kill minidisc?'. Different technological concepts.
I can put MP3's on CD, I can put them on MD, I can put them on audio cassette. These are merely storage devices for the format.
Oh, I know why, SlashDot/Linux geeks only listen to music coming from their computers. Well, last time I tried to take my computer running with me I almost broke my back.
What a stupid thing to say..
Thats like saying 'No one will ever eat apples or oranges again, in todays society we all drive cars...
Uh dUh, DVD LD comparison is valid but MDDVD? Guess you don't know what a MD is.
Must be a Linux user...Bashing what he doesnt understand.
Am I the only one that was totally disgusted by the 'enhancements' they put into the first three movies when they re-released them? The CG sucked and was totally out of place. To me, going back and doing anything but 'digitally remastering' these classics was akin to colorizing the old black and white classics. It was disgusting and catered to the kiddies who, if a movie doesnt have at least one complex CG shot, write it off as a waste of time.
I mean come on, he took a dusty, dirty, grimy, scum ridden backwater planet and, in one CG scene, turned it into a cutsie, comical, 'fun for the family' stellar body. It pissed me off, more then the Phantom Menace will ever piss anyone off. The Phantom Menace is something new, let it be what it will be, allow it to evolve into its real form. Marketing, money, great filmaking, whatever that is. But to alter the originals, its disgusting.
Even all of the 'flashback' star wars shows are using the new footage to illustrate the original. That huge new death star explosion sequence is totally out of place and uses colors that don't even _exist_ in the rest of the film. Yet a whole generation will grow up thinking 'thats the way it was'.
Don't fuck with the classics. Oh, but I forget, he needed to get total control over the merchandising rights now that so many years have passed....
You doofs. I put MP3's on my MD player, I put tracks from my MD on my MP3 player. They are not competing technologies.
I'll build one out, throw Apache on it, write a CGI interface to the player and put it on my network downstairs. Then the world can come and see what is on my playlist and decide what I should listen to next 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
/. my MP3 home stereo equipment. That would be a first.
Just think, I could log peoples selections and see just how bad everyone's taste actually is.
I'll send a story in once its done and you can all
I bet 90% of the people who bitch and moan about this barely write code themselves.
/. might to 'Get those anti-open-sourcers'.
Also, love the prematurely negative assessment of it before it was read. If someone did the same to Linux the community would be up in arms.
'At first glance, the Open Source Licensing for Linux appears to be an improvement but its waaaay long and I'm no lawyer'. You'd all be spamming that reviewer ASAP and using your
Lame bias. Friggin read it before you start putting a negative spin on it. I don't care for any OS over another ( well, I can't use windows at all so thats not true ) but there is an obvious slant here. Apple == Totally NEgative , FreeBSD == Mostly Negative , Linux == Godlike. Its moronic. You folks need to get over this lame ass schoolyard mentality and get on the boat, realize that OS's are NOT one size fits all and to claim so and disparage other OS's because of this view makes you no better then Apple of Microsoft.
I am getting massively spammed by people on my cell phone # which is in my registrant info at Internic. Its pretty friggin annoying.
Its not about LOC, its about innovation. I've worked with Euro's, taken over projects from Israeli's and Russians and I have got to say, there is a major cultural difference that displays itself even in the code.
.0001% occurrance.
The code tends to be a bit over-engineered and top heavy. Where an american programmer might say 'Ok, this gets the job done and is fairly bullet proof, lets go with it' an overseas programmer will go through some friggin amazing hoops to take care of the
At this time also, overseas programmers are just not as innovative for the most part. They are great at 'doing a project' but they are not good at 'coming up with the project from conception to completion' like US programmers are. A US programmer is hired to design, develop, maintain and evolve a system. An overseas programmer is generally hired to write the code.
This is all generalizations from my experience and most likely subject to change, but it has been my experience as invalid as that might be.
Evangelist was a godsend when it started. It provided ammo, solutions and a support group for Apple users who were being pursued with hostile intent. It sounds paranoid but working as a Sys Admin you really got to see the way management would go after Macs for no apparent reason. Evangelists helped fight those sorts of stupid biases and allowed people to get back to work.
Its true though, Evangelist served its purpose. They are few and far between now, no more calls to action ( those were always fun ) and the news is covered better elsewhere. Evangelist is a victim of its own success and I wouldnt have it any other way.
Their arrogance is 'bad arrogance' but your arrogance is 'good arrogance'.
Go figure.
They teach ASM on the motorola chips not for future usefulness but because its the easiest ASM going from what I have seen and heard. That ASM class should be like CS10 ( it was for us, the first class you take ) and serves more to weed out idiots and unmotivated people then anything else.
You may be the most l88t coder on the planet, but this class is teaching you to deal with new concepts on foreign systems. I found it quite entertaining. Go to class and finish up with an A. That A will get you much farther then senseless platform/usefulness arrogance. If you in college to learn applicable skills then your in the wrong place. CS teaches two things : 1) Concepts 2) How to use reference books.
I never finished although I worked very hard at it. In the end the lure of the real world and projects overseas took me away from school and I never returned. I regret not finishing my CS degree yet at the same time I know that the best course of action is the course I find myself on. The opportunities presented to me now have absolutely nothing to do with my education and my lack of a formal degree has not been criticized by anyone from venture capitalists to my business partners.
:)
I think school does different things for different people. There is no real 'universal constant' in terms of what is best. For entrepreneurial people college life will never be enough and they will know that. However, there are tons of people who don't have that drive and whose sole goal is to 'learn that computer stuff' so that they can get a good secure job with benefits. This is especially true as CS becomes more a of a business style major with people involved who have no passion for it and just want the big jobs that everyone says 'knowing computers' will give you. This was the worst things about college, dealing with the fruits who were involved in CS purely for the financial aspects.
That said, the 3 years of college I did attend really taught me a lot and got me started. It served as an introduction to how things are 'supposed' to be done. I have always written code but the concepts and styles I was introduced to in school have left a lasting impact. Its like literature and writing in a way, you have to know whats been done to do your best work and college is a great venue to learn about what others have accomplished and give you building blocks to construct the future with. It showed me a deeper level of understanding and also gave me a map of the landscape. The concepts I was introduced to are concepts that would have never shown their ugly heads to me otherwise and I have benefited greatly from them. The mind boggles at what I would have seen had I finished.
So, different strokes for different folks I think. A lot of it depends on personality type and individual drive/motivation. Me, I enjoyed college and want to finish but I know that my path to success has be driven more by my internal drive, ambition and intelligence then a document I recieved as credit for time spent.
Lastly, I bet Salon wrote this article specifically to get a Slashdot effect going
Well MD isnt really a competitor to MP3 I don't think. To me MD replaces the traditional tape recorder. I use mine for a variety of purposes from building work out tapes to recording interviews. My MD is going to BurningMan this year to record interviews and experiences as well as audio trails.
To me MP3 is more specialized in what it does. The MD complements the MP3 format by giving it a different method of storage.
The real competition is Rio vs. MiniDisc and to me the MD wins hands down. I mix MP3/CD/Others sources onto my MD all the time. Its amazingly flexible, sounds fantastic and is super easy to use. The indexing features alone make it worth the money.
So don't buy that this is an MP3 vs. MD issue, its Rio vs. MD and MD will win. Its a much more reasonable format.
More then once I have had the urge to begin contributing to the community. I have written code, documented it and gained authorization for its release. But at the last minute I always hestiate and then stop. Why? I think I fear the fangs of the community. At this point, everywhere I turn its a big flamefest and getting quite tiresome. Its gotten to the point where it seems one has to be some sort of Jedi Master level coder to contribute.On more then a few mailing lists I have seen contributors flamed for their contributions! Flaming someone for GIVING something away. Its incredible.
So, until the kiddies grow up and people realize that the community needs to regain a certain level of acceptance and mellowness I think it will continue to be difficult to bring new people into the fold. Most likely I will contribute in the near future as I feel that my coding skills can pass most of the tests all of the el88t hax0Rs can put it through but its still an issue.
If we can somehow provide an environment of mentoring rather then community flaming I think we would see great advances. I have no idea what form this would take, mailing lists, web sites or whatnot. But some sort of mentoring to ease newbies from users to contributors would really make a huge contribution to advancing the movement.
Just one coders opinion and experience.
This sort of thing is not capitalism but something else entirely that I don't even have a word for.
In a true capitalistic society you do not have trademark disputes over non issues such as this and if you want something you BUY it, you don't bully people into not using items.
For example a friend of mine registered webstreetjournal.com a long time ago. The Wall Street Journal contacted him with a cease and desist. They dont WANT the domain they just dont want HIM to use it. This is de facto owenership and needs to be abolished. If you want to OWN something then you should be obligated to AQUIRE it legally By not allowing others to use such domain names you by default own it yourself.
This is wrong and needs to be fixed. ASAP.