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  1. Didn't always hate MS, used to be IBM on Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    At first, IBM tried to put the screws to a GUI on the desktop because it took away sales from their mainframe division. At that time everyone hated IBM. Why? for the same reason we hate Microsoft today. THEY KEEP TRYING TO RAM PROPRIETARY CRAP DOWN OUR THROATS I didn't help that Gates called everyone who coppies a thief either. Computers and the internet are the greatest copying tools ever made, it is pratically the whole meaning of their existence.

  2. dangerous? on World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    You know sometimes we put people in jail for reasons other than they are dangerous, like to punish them...

    ... or to suppress their freedoms and liberties. In which case defiance is not only a right, but a duty. If we need to punish anyone, it is the government, it is they who are being dangerous, it is they who are coercively violating peoples liberties.

  3. my predictions on Bruce Sterling's Final Prediction · · Score: 1

    I predict that the internet means the death of the copyright system. It also means the death of the US dollar and the financial system - the games that they play with lying to people about the value of their money are about to come to an ugly end thanks to the information age. The internet also means terrorisim all over the world as cultures everywhere continue to come into unrestricted, unmonitored, and uninhibited information many will lash out at the US and US culture as they experience a culture shock of their own. It is even a culture shock in the US, which for the most part was allready adapted to unrestricted information in the press. I also predict the eventual death of google, ebay, youtube, and more as these services will eventually be all pure p2p software. I predict that it also means a massive migration around the world of talent and culture, as western engineers find out that they live like a king making 30K in Chile rather than 130K in the US. Also, future workers at McDonnalds may be robots remotely controlled from India. This will break down all immigration controls and tend to even out all pay globally.

  4. Re:Old environmentalism vs new environmentalism on UN Report Downgrades Human Impact on Climate · · Score: 1

    This is because, "environmentalism" as we know it never has been about the environment, but always about the money. The fact that "global warming" must be solved by the UN and massive government micro regulations at every level while individuals making private choices by their own free will is considered tersiary should be more telling than all the studies, science, and calculations on global warming combined.

    The war on "gobal warming" is like the war on drugs. Notice how they try and control the distribution of drugs and give themselves massive pay and police power to do so, while never addressing the reason why people do drugs. Well, notice how they go about "solving" the "global warming" problem the same way.

  5. Re:freedom and resources on Moglen on Social Justice and OSS · · Score: 1
    I suppose the laptops might help in that regard- the children would see concepts they would otherwise not be exposed to.


    In 1960's China. Millions and millions of people were dying from starvation as the farms were not producing enough food. But, no amount of new farming tools was going to help it. No amount of charity was going to stop the massive death tolls. So what stopped it. Well, the farmers revolted and forced China to switch back to a private property system. The point is that people don't need charity, they don't need tools, they needed understanding and freedom. Handing these kids laptops is like handing them farming tools. They don't need a freaking laptop, they don't need high speed internt. What they need is some understanding of liberty (and some guns parhaps). Maybe being connected will get them that understanding, but I doubt it. Has slashdot turned back the tide of statisim here in the US, nope. The internet in the US has only made the mob more capable of enhancing their power base to coercively take from one group and distribute to another.

  6. freedom and resources on Moglen on Social Justice and OSS · · Score: 2, Informative

    One problem. For the longest time, we have already had more than enough food to feed the world. The primary problem of getting food to the poor was never a cost or distribution problem, it was a political and freedom problem. The fact that we have entered the information age with free software has not changed this problem. While society has advanced greatly in the sciences over the last 150 years. Society has gained nearly nothing in the advancement of freedom and liberty. The US constitution was the cutting edge of that, but has not increased our liberties and powers for a long time.

    Notice that how even though Linux is free, that the place that it is used the most is silicon valley - more than any other place in the world. A free market Mecca. Not Africa, not China, not India. That's because it's not about costs, but about freedom. And free markets are not about markets, but about freedom too and people taking advantage of it to create wealth and prosperity where none existed before.

    Contrary to what he said, the free market still has limits, but now the limit in supply and demand centers around services and not around content controls. The information age is doing for services what the industrial revolution did for production.

  7. Article is Bullshit on Sun CTO Predicts Internet Consolidation Endgame · · Score: 1

    What he means to say is that he "wishes" that it's all going to be a serivce. He "wishes" that he can sell us a stupid word app that plugs into the internet, and that we pay him $20 per month for the rest of eternity. Well, I got news for him - the future of software is free, as in freedom, as in Linux, apache, firefox, and ironically open office. While companies will pay for SERVICES or for expertice to make sure all systems are go, and while the cost of that service per value will go down over time because free software is always improving in terms of ease, security and reliability. This is a far cry from saying that all software will be like a service provided over the internet that the masses subscribe to. While there will be a lot of remot support and custom software, that will be a lot different that all software being remote. Sun's problem all along is that markets are customer driven, not driven by corporate wishfull wet dreams like this.

    And about EBay, and what not. He has that wrong too. Eventually all search, auctions, shared data, news, photo sharing, and music will be pure peer to peer. The big datacenter era that we are in now is juat a stepping stone down that path.

  8. Mod parent up! on U.S. Warns of Possible Cyber Biz Attack · · Score: 1

    I agree. I don't think terrorists can take out the market, but I certainly think the bankers and big brokers can. The bottom line is that the US GDP is around 13 trillion, but the amount of outstanding derivative contracts total over 350 trillion, and 24 trillion of those are interest rate sensitive. I'm sorry, but not even the fed can bail out that kind of a derivatives wash (and get away with it).

    Something really stinks about this warning. They are going out of their way to publish it everywhere, but also going out of their way to say there is nothing to it. Huh? Something really stinks about the markets - in dollars they're going up, but in most every other currency they're going down. Something really stinks about the fact that gold and silver are blowing away every other investment class even after a recent huge dip. Hell, they don't even pay interest. Something really stinks about the housing market, it is crashing 5 times faster than they said it would a year ago and no one is even concerned? B-of-A has over 4 trillion in housing derivatives alone - why are they not in a panic right now? And the account deficit at over 6%, I'm sorry, but that's bannana republic territory. And how come short term bonds are paying more interest than the long term ones?

    If the market has a panic, does that mean that people are going to be stuck with "bad" stocks when they freeze trading?
    If a terrorist attacks, does that mean that a "terrorist" will log in and sell their "good" stocks?

    All I'm saying, don't be supprised if you wake up one morning in a market crash and find all your good stocks sold, but sell orders on all your bad ones didn't get executed. I smell a big pile of shit and don't like it one bit.

  9. Patents play a big role on Why Do Gadgets Break? · · Score: 1

    If anyone could make that same microwave part, or that same auto part. It would cause the industry to compete around more standardized parts and force competition to rotate around quality AND cost. Right now, it centers around cost to the extent that a competitor can make a part with the same kind of functionality in another product, but patents guarantee that you don't have switch and swap parts across competitive sectors. The one exception is that you can't patent interfaces (though many have tried), and it's very easy to see how that had a profound effect on many systems peripherial parts.

  10. DDT on Politics and 'An Inconvenient Truth' · · Score: 1

    It's estimated that 50 million people have died that wouldn't have otherwise if DDT was still in common use.
    DDT would need to be pretty goddam harmfull to justify those kinds of numbers, it isn't. The DDT story is the epitome of
    the EPA their junk science. DDT

  11. Re:Is this really such a bad thing? on Growing Problems With Electronics Waste · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The truth is that if you calculate it out, 35 square miles at 200 ft deep is more than enough to hold all the US trash for 1000 years. Considering that the surface area of the earth is several orders of magnitude larger, it doesn't take much to figure out that we don't have a trash problem but we do have a problem global bureauocrats who think they know how to manage our lives better than we do. The worst scam they push on people is the one about "toxic" cell phones. Bullshit, all the cell phones on the planet could fit in 200 cubic feet of space, they are just trying to scam money from lucrative industries.

  12. China will always copy on Knockoff Tech Selling Better Than the Original · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Eventually China will crack down on the blatant piracy seen on its shores ....

    No it won't.
     
    1. Having IP strings attached to it by every country in the world is not in China's national best interest, having an duplicate manufacturing base is.
    2. Copying stuff freely is very deeply engrained in Asian culture, and that won't change in spite of western bigotry
    3. In spite of the self rightous bullshit and wining by people in the west. Copyrights and Patents have nothing to do with incentive, property, or free markets and have everything to do with using the brute force of government to preserve monopolies.

    Truth is, we are gonna get exactly what we have comming to us if we don't pull our head out

  13. What if that plantation master really holds title! on So What If Linux Infringes On Microsoft IP? · · Score: 1

    So, what if it is true. What if that plantation master really does hold the title over that man of color who lives in the north?

    Come on, no matter how much of a anti-Slavery fan you are, you have to admit that there's at least a chance that Slave is indeed the plantation masters property. After all, the plantation master holds a lot of slaves and while this one is free, you can still take a look at his papers, only the master has access to most of the town records so it isn't all that difficult for it to prove - to himself at any rate - that that free slave is a violation of his property rights while living in the north. After all, before a previous plantation master freed some 500 slaves to the north, it's pretty clear that they were his property. Given that, why is it so hard to believe that the same isn't going on with this plantation master?"

    ....editorial insert: well, the appropiate responce to these kind of comments would not be a philosophical debate but is a tad of violence with a big fat "fuck you burn in hell!"

  14. Re:Hands up, everyone who DIDN'T see this coming.. on Trusted Or Treacherous Computing? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I saw it comming more than two years ago ... What DRM is REALLY REALLY REALLY about

  15. Re:Silver is good on Regulating Nanotechnology In Cleansers · · Score: 1

    Yes I do want more. Both of these people were over 70 and and other things could have esaially led to the same condition. In fact, both were probably already taking the silverbiotic to relieve something that was already tormenting them. The 2nd case, almost looks like a mis diagnosis based on the color of his skin.

    Also, did you read your own excerpts. The 2nd clearly says that Argyria is thought to be relatively harmless other than skin coloration. Exacty as I said, and what you didn't.

  16. Re:Silver is good on Regulating Nanotechnology In Cleansers · · Score: 1

    Please show me one person who has died from Argyria. Please state your medical credentials. Argyria is not known to be fatal, it never has been, it is a discoloration of the skin and that is all, and it only happens with extreme doses of silver such as 18 ounces of raw silver. You could probably drink 100 gallons of nano particle saturated water and not get a fraction of that. You are more likely to be bitten by sharks 10 times, and struck by lightening 5 times than to suffer from it. Silver is NOT toxic to humans, only to bacteria, that is why it is so popular as an anti-biotic. Also, it is true that the liver and kidneys don't filter it out, but the body can get rid of silver thru hair growth, nail growth, normal skin regeneration, laser treatment, and a what is called a "nician flush" (that is probably more dangerous than just leaving the silver there, but people who have had overdoses don't like the skin color of it). At todays low doses, the body is more than capable of getting rid of it faster than it accumulates it.

    Instead of being concerned about a silver overdose, you should be concerned about the EPA. First off, they are treating human health as less important than generic environmental causes - and they know it, notice the thanksgiving weekend press release. Second off, they are regulating nanotechnology, which is bullshit. It used to be fear of the rail roads, then fear of machines, then fear of electricity, then fear of computers, and today fear of the internet, and tommorow fear of nanotech. We've gone thru all this before. We don't need protection from nanotech, what we need is for the government to get off our back and stay off.

    Finally, third off. Silver is also a monitary metal that competes with the dollar as a currency, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that the federal reserve can not afford anything to happen that drives up it's value. They have saturated the economy with so much debt loaned out as dollars that a a spike in precious metal prices would kill them. Not to mention that the "shorts" in silver market (held by the biggest US banks) exceed the inventory in the market as I speak. Why are they trying so hard to suppress the price of silver? It's been used as an antibiotic and in common coins for over a century, and now all of a sudden the government is trying to regulate it's use. I call bullshit.

  17. The problem is markets are choice based on Stock-Picking Computers · · Score: 2, Informative

    While there are probably measurable patterns. Many aspects of a market are choice based. For example, today central bankers are in a real bind. If they raise rates, it could crash housing and the whole economy with it. If they lower rates, there could be a panic out of the dollar to currencies that offer a higher return on interest rates. Once that move starts, than even investments that don't do anything at all (like gold) will rocket, making the panic even worse. In the end a human is making those choices at the helm, and a only a human can have the intuitive understanding that you better buy gold (but not on margin), even if it looks like a crappy investment. Another thing, if someone knows that the computer reads pattern X Y Z as a sell, then they might try to force the stock price to make that pattern against the market to force a computer sell and get in on it at a good price.

  18. translations .... on Do You Own Your Native Language? · · Score: 3, Funny

    OK, well...

    "lets just be friends" translates to "jump off a cliff and commit suicide"
    "I seek a man who is kind with a big heart" translates to "I seek a man who is rich with a big wallet"
    "can we talk" translates to "you're in deep shit and you're gonna get it"
    "this is cute" translates to "give me the dough, now!"
    "we feel..." translates to "I'm gonna make you feel..."
    "marrage" translates to "on a tight leash" ... hope that helps.

  19. yahoo going down on Yahoo! Goes To Print · · Score: 1

    Well, a while back when they willingly and openly started turning people into the Chinese government for free speech violations. I knew it was time to tell yahoo to go to hell. I am not a bit sorry for them. This agreement shows that they still don't get it. The future is not information content, it is information services. The information age is doing to services what the industrial revolution did for production. Is this parternership a service agreement? no! it is a content agreement. It shows that they still don't get it (or maybe they do, but can't bring themselves to compete against Google). Either way, eventually Yahoo is going to need to pull their head out or an ass kicking in the real world will do it for them.

  20. But Linux is more pro free market than MS on Steve Ballmer's Thoughts On Free Software · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The Indians will want nothing to do with it. India has a history of thousands of years of being capitalists...

    Then India will love Linux, because Linux is more pro- free market than Microsoft is. You need to stop thinking of copyrights like a property right, and start thinking of them like a communist regulation that controlls how people use information in the information age.

    Let me give an example, at one large data center I worked for they had these NT servers that ran a database application for 1000's of locations. Sure enough the things would crash every day, and sure enough it would cost them over a million dollars per hour of down time. They bought the best x86's that money could buy, they custom re-wrote the tcp/ip stack, but still the computers would crash every single day and still it would cost them over a million dollars per hour. Finally, they flew in experts from all over the planet. The experts came back and said that there was a bug in the OS that was causing it. So my company then went to Microsoft and demanded that they fix it. Microsoft in "business speak" basically said "screw off and FU".

    So please tell me that if they had the source, and ownership of that source couldn't be controled. Would they have refused to pay for a fully backed support contract? Would they have said "no were not going pay developers to fix it, because someone else could copy our fixes?" Hell no, that code would have gotten fixed, and every body would have benefited.

    In things like software, free riders are not a burden because their copy deosn't deprive me of my copy. But rather, spreads exposure and therefore the chances soneone elses fix will be my fix. So the forces driving Linux forward and pushing Microsoft back are pure unadulterated free market forces and that is that.

  21. spray paint problem = drug problem on Jailtime For Leeching Wireless? · · Score: 1

    In all fairness, 99% of the time the spray paint problem comes from gangs marking their territories, and 99% of the time they mark their territories because they want to minimize killing each other in drug related turf wars. Translation: kill the war on drugs and the graffiti problem will disapear overnight.

    Singapore tried just the opposite. They tried to hide the graffiti problem, but that led to an explosion in drug violence, so then they cracked down hard on drug dealers and drug users. But that ment that they were applying all their resources to the symptoms and not the problem, so now Singapore teens not only have wide spread sympathy toward drug use, but Singapore also has a worse drug problem than the US does.

    Yeah wonderfull, Singapores streets are cleaner, but their drug loards are richer, and their kids are worse off than they ever were.

  22. Nope on Jailtime For Leeching Wireless? · · Score: 3, Informative

    What was really funny is that Singapore has laws against wasting water, but then they also have laws requiring you to flush the tiolet in public places. So people got all scared that it was illegal to poop, because if they flushed they could be fined for wasting water and if the didn't they could be fined for not flushing. Of course, they couldn't complain about this problem because it would embarass the government and bring penalities upon them too, so to my knowledge it is still technically illegal to poop to this day, unless they made added an extension for a signle flush.

    Also, I renember discussing with people when gum was banned in 89 (? I think). Contrary to myth, it wasn't to keep the sidewalks clean. It was because they engineered their subway system so poorly and so stupidly, that if you blocked one door - that none of the other doors would work and the whole freakin system would shut down. It wasn't long before kids discovered that all they gotta do is stuff their gum in the door on the way out, so then the doors couldn't shut, the subway couldn't move, and the whole freaking system would go out of service. So basically it was a stupid law to hide the faults of a stupid system. If that is the perfect description of Singapore then I don't know what is. (Singapore inc. as they call themselves .... yeah whatever)

  23. A thief called "the city" is still a thief on The Ballpark Stadium of the Future · · Score: 1

    Ya know. Imagine that a thief busted into your house, put a gun to your face, and demanded 10000 dollars. You pay, then a few months later the thief comes back and promises to split 10200 between all your friends and family - and takes full credit for it. The mroal is....

    Technically on paper, the group is better off financially, but in practice you are all far worse off because you have all lost the right to determine how you sepnd your money and resources. Not to mention that the reputation and credit that deserves to attributed to you is now attributed to a thief. In practice, it was more of a wealth transfer from you to soneone else than an investment, and in practive even if a thief promises that its value will be paid back - in the real world it never does because if the thief had a honest and compelling argument that this was the best investment to make - he would not need to stick a gun to your face would he?

    Well the same is true with city governments when they use the coercive power of government to spend your money on grand projects. Technically speaking it might bring more business to the city or whatever, but in practice it doesn't, and in practice even if it did the people who flipped the bill are still worse off.

  24. Re:Well, I guess Microsoft Gets It Now on Microsoft Interested In More Linux Deals · · Score: 1

    I doubt it. If they got it, then they would GPL therir software and release their patents so they could be more effective as a service based industry instead of a control based one. What they get is the use of DRM to control content, I haven't herd anyone at Microsoft repudiate that intellectual property is their "crown jewels" as they call them.

    You see information is so easy to copy and modify that in a DRM world you can't have some content systems that are restricted and others that are not, otherwise all the people will migrate to the non restricted ones. Even if Linux remains free, they still must get Linux into the DRM space in order to persue their dream of leveraging content controls on every system. Information doesn't act like normal physical property, so their strategy is to use DRM to force it and then try to monopolize that market accordingly. They are probably trying to provide for a migration path for the Linux market when the DRM regulatory hammer (laws that they bought) come down.

  25. death of copyrights on The Information Factories Are Here · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What is going to happen, or what is happening, is that the service value of information is exceeding the content value of information, and will continue to do so at a greater rate from now on. The information age is doing to information services what the industrial revolution did for production. Eventually, information restrictions like copyrights will be such an incredible and annoying hinderence on providing information services that the financial pressure to kill them will become unbearable.