In my country, people can be charged by criminal laws in this country if they go overseas and sexually abuse childeren in another country. Even if it's legal in that country to do so.
I sure hope they pass a law like that for other things as well as just child rape. If we truly are a civilized country, we should hold our people to the highest standards no matter where they happen to travel in the world.
My $0.02 ($0.015 US)
Re:Dogs smarter than chimps
on
The Origin of Dogs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't think dogs are smarter... They may be fairly good at interpreting social cues from humans, but that's from conditioning.
Personally I think dogs are better at finding food because of their superior sense of smell. I think this is another case of bad research, at least with comparing relative intelligence.
She's this lovely lady in her sixties. She's doing office admin work here in our small office, just for spending money for when she flies to Palm Springs every winter. Until this job, she hasn't touched a computer in literally decades! It took her a while to get used to the idea of a mouse and a GUI, not to mention the flakiness of Office, but she's learning great. However, she used to be a crackerjack COBOL and FORTRAN programmer, so once in a while she still amazes me. She says she misses the old UNIX command line, and all that came with it.
Boy was she mad when she found out she couldn't have a look at the source code for MS Word, to see where the bugs were!
"Yes, I do care if the government wants to know, but not some store managers."
Would you care if store managers knew, when soon there will be a law requiring them to pass this on to the government? It's about to happen, if it hasn't already. Soon corporate spying will be an intermediate step to government spying.
Privatization is more efficient, after all.
Bork!
Re:What happened to all those tribbles??
on
Ask William Shatner
·
· Score: 2
"It seems that she was moving things on her desk, and her tower fell over."
"AFAIC, power supplies are the worst offenders."
AFAIC, users are the worst offenders, power supplies are second. Anyone who knocks their tower over, or drops their laptop, loses all right to blame resulting problems on hardware.
This hipocricy is some of the reason why so many people hate the USA. On one hand you stand up for all these wonderful human rights and ideals, and then you guys seem to think that gives you the freedom to destroy these rights willy nilly.
Freedom of speech: See above thread. See DMCA. See just about anything else George Bush has done recently.
Democracy: Your 2 party (2 sides of the same coin) system is one of the most corrupt in the world. There's not much difference in Republican or Democrat, either way, some rich fuck will get in.
Right to bear arms: Look at the gun restrictions every state passes. You don't even have that anymore.
Equality of the sexes: I don't even know where to begin. USA style feminism set back women a hundred years.
Equality of races: Your entire country is one big slow-motion race riot. Try driving a nice car if you have dark skin. At least Indians aren't much of a problem because you've killed most of them already. Bastards. Basically if you're not white, you're FUCKED.
Gay rights: Unless you live in a gay ghetto like San Francisco, you're fucked.
Freedom to pursue happiness: Your governemnt and society pushes down poor people so badly, that they never have a chance to break out of it. And if you're poor, and you get sick, and you live in the USA, you're FUCKED.
Freedom to work: Government protection of workers is almost nil, and your unions are so corrupt they just forgot to rename themselves as "mafia". If you don't believe this, check into the Teamster's Union one of these days.
Freedom of Religion: Unless you're one one of the few state-sanctioned religions, you're pretty much screwed. You will be monitored.
Nice environment: Has your president done one single good thing to offset the many bad environmental things he's done already?
Peaceful country: I don't think there is any other mondern country that has had as many wars and foreign incursions as the USA. Not even the USSR. Your disregard for non-americans is legendary. I'm really surprised that it took till 2001 for someone to give the USA a black eye. By how you carry on, it should have happened decades ago.
You, the USA, SUCK. At least now with your current president, he's too dumb to keep up the illusions. Nobody else will fix problems for you, it's time you stood up and fixed your own damn country. The kind of posts I've seen on Slashdot remind me more of an oppressive dictatorship than the beacon of democracy.
It's only in your minds that the US was ever a free country. Your government has just been the best at fooling you.
I would LOVE an electric car! Here in Canada, because of the need for block heaters, there are out door plugs almost everywhere there are private parking stalls. This includes most downtown parkades. I could then refuel my car when I got to work, visit friends, or even better yet, suck power from my lawyer's parking lot when I go there. Just the idea of that sends a thrill through me!
I'll buy a laptop that has a methanol fuel cell in it when I can plug my laptop into any wall socket to recharge my methanol supply. Sure methanol may last way longer, but the readily availiable supply of electricity far outweighs the benefits of the longer lasting fuel cell.
I had a friend who went to jail for duplicating data. The problem was, he was using a color photocopier at his work to duplicate $20 bills. And all he did was use a photocopier!
Other than that, I agree with your post... Much of this should be civil only. I also think that Corporations have so much power to put individuals behind bars, yet no individual can put a corporation behind bars. However, legally, corps are people too. I don't get it.
"The non-theist or atheist however, can only say, "morality is determined by man"."
I disagree. As a non-theist, I find most of Morality to be simple logic. Morality is universally obvious, much like 1+1 = 2 is. It's that obvious, at least for me. Much like our understanding of mathematics, our understanding of morality has improved over the ages. For people who lag behind in the brains department, I sure am glad there's the authoritarian organization called the Church.
How does his crime sentence compare to other crimes that involve copying? I wonder how it would compare to, say, wholesale duplication of $100 bills? Everyone always compares piracy to software theft, when in reality, it's much closer to counterfeiting. Both the copyright system and the monetary system rely on government imposed scarcity. The hard question that some people here on Slashdot need to ask themselves, is can the economy survive if that artificial scarcity is removed.
In my personal opinion, I believe the world would be a much better (and radically different) place if copyright is cut short. In this hectic information age, can anyone imagine a world where copyright only lasted 5 years from publication? I'd love to see a reasoned debate on this issue.
And, for my question to the convicted pirate... What is his personal view on the politics of copyright, and what his views (if any) are of what life would be like under such a system.
I guess you described my complaint... How can one possibly call these individuals "System Experts" when they aren't even given basic hardware training. Knowing what RAM looks like would benefit most MCSE's. Perhaps realistically the "S" in MCSE should stand for software. Who would think that Microsoft would use deceptive advertising?
I had a relative (not by blood thank goodness) who just became an MCSE. He decided to celebrate by buying himself a really expensive system on credit, that had way more power than he was really going to use. I figured I would test his abilities, so I gave him an older SCSI hard drive to install on his system as an extra drive. When he opened up his box, he knocked his ram half out of it's socket. The system naturally wouldn't boot. He spent weeks trying to fix the computer himself in embarrasment. After a month of this computer sitting useless, and his wife getting angry seeing bills come in on a useless computer, she ordered him to call me. Right in front of him, I opened the case, looked around, noticed the ram, pushed it in, closed up, and the system booted just fine. It took me perhaps 5 minutes, and he was red faced.
It just goes to show, you actually need brains behind the MCSE to make things work. Apart from a semester of a 9th grade computer class which taught me how to use obsolete Apple II's and program in BASIC, I havn't taken a single class.
Or use computers, for that matter. As far as I can tell, this thing was designed to help dumb people build things that are too complex for them to build in the first place.
I recently bought a large and complex second-hand desk that was unassembled. I deduced how it goes together, and I assembled it myself. Two parts were missing. I contacted the manufacturer, who was kind enough to ship them to me free of charge all the way from Quebec. The even shipped me a manual so I could verify how it goes together.
All this new technology will do is further confuse the dumb people, and insult the intelligence of people who know how figure it out. After 4 years with a computer, my boss still asks me how to save attachments in her outlook express, or how to scan and save documents. Things like computer interfaces or "Peg A goes into slot B" technologies have reached the limit of simplification. There is some technology that can't (and shouldn't) be made simpler. The only thing my boss (and dumb people trying to assemble things) would benefit more from is if someone did the work for them.
The money and effort spent on this new technology would be better served if the company started shipping pre-built furniture.
So you're saying that he's recording evidence of himself impersonating a federal agent... I wonder if any of the smarter telemarketers who doubted him thought of playing a reverse trick on him, and pretending to be the real FBI when phoning him.
If that would be recorded, I would pay good money to hear it.
By that comment, you betray the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about. I've seen many nice studios in my time, and not a one of them was owned, or even influenced by the RIAA. Then again, I'm in Canada. Does this make a difference? Are you Americans really that far gone?
Slashdot Mirror
Can I invoke Godwin's Rule if the post is on topic and "+5 Insightful"?
In my country, people can be charged by criminal laws in this country if they go overseas and sexually abuse childeren in another country. Even if it's legal in that country to do so.
I sure hope they pass a law like that for other things as well as just child rape. If we truly are a civilized country, we should hold our people to the highest standards no matter where they happen to travel in the world.
My $0.02 ($0.015 US)
I don't think dogs are smarter... They may be fairly good at interpreting social cues from humans, but that's from conditioning.
Personally I think dogs are better at finding food because of their superior sense of smell. I think this is another case of bad research, at least with comparing relative intelligence.
Ack it filtered out my URL.
http://www.dictaphone.com
'nuff said.
My co-worker is better...
She's this lovely lady in her sixties. She's doing office admin work here in our small office, just for spending money for when she flies to Palm Springs every winter. Until this job, she hasn't touched a computer in literally decades! It took her a while to get used to the idea of a mouse and a GUI, not to mention the flakiness of Office, but she's learning great. However, she used to be a crackerjack COBOL and FORTRAN programmer, so once in a while she still amazes me. She says she misses the old UNIX command line, and all that came with it.
Boy was she mad when she found out she couldn't have a look at the source code for MS Word, to see where the bugs were!
Bork!
"Yes, I do care if the government wants to know, but not some store managers ."
Would you care if store managers knew, when soon there will be a law requiring them to pass this on to the government? It's about to happen, if it hasn't already. Soon corporate spying will be an intermediate step to government spying.
Privatization is more efficient, after all.
Bork!
In other words, they were eventually burned.
"It seems that she was moving things on her desk, and her tower fell over."
"AFAIC, power supplies are the worst offenders."
AFAIC, users are the worst offenders, power supplies are second. Anyone who knocks their tower over, or drops their laptop, loses all right to blame resulting problems on hardware.
Funny story though.
Wasn't there just a slashdot story a while ago saying how it was Power supplies that were the huge cause?
This hipocricy is some of the reason why so many people hate the USA. On one hand you stand up for all these wonderful human rights and ideals, and then you guys seem to think that gives you the freedom to destroy these rights willy nilly.
Freedom of speech: See above thread. See DMCA. See just about anything else George Bush has done recently.
Democracy: Your 2 party (2 sides of the same coin) system is one of the most corrupt in the world. There's not much difference in Republican or Democrat, either way, some rich fuck will get in.
Right to bear arms: Look at the gun restrictions every state passes. You don't even have that anymore.
Equality of the sexes: I don't even know where to begin. USA style feminism set back women a hundred years.
Equality of races: Your entire country is one big slow-motion race riot. Try driving a nice car if you have dark skin. At least Indians aren't much of a problem because you've killed most of them already. Bastards. Basically if you're not white, you're FUCKED.
Gay rights: Unless you live in a gay ghetto like San Francisco, you're fucked.
Freedom to pursue happiness: Your governemnt and society pushes down poor people so badly, that they never have a chance to break out of it. And if you're poor, and you get sick, and you live in the USA, you're FUCKED.
Freedom to work: Government protection of workers is almost nil, and your unions are so corrupt they just forgot to rename themselves as "mafia". If you don't believe this, check into the Teamster's Union one of these days.
Freedom of Religion: Unless you're one one of the few state-sanctioned religions, you're pretty much screwed. You will be monitored.
Nice environment: Has your president done one single good thing to offset the many bad environmental things he's done already?
Peaceful country: I don't think there is any other mondern country that has had as many wars and foreign incursions as the USA. Not even the USSR. Your disregard for non-americans is legendary. I'm really surprised that it took till 2001 for someone to give the USA a black eye. By how you carry on, it should have happened decades ago.
You, the USA, SUCK. At least now with your current president, he's too dumb to keep up the illusions. Nobody else will fix problems for you, it's time you stood up and fixed your own damn country. The kind of posts I've seen on Slashdot remind me more of an oppressive dictatorship than the beacon of democracy.
It's only in your minds that the US was ever a free country. Your government has just been the best at fooling you.
In all likelyhood, the industrial quality sodium is probably sold by the tonne, with a minimum one-tonne purchase order.
I would LOVE an electric car! Here in Canada, because of the need for block heaters, there are out door plugs almost everywhere there are private parking stalls. This includes most downtown parkades. I could then refuel my car when I got to work, visit friends, or even better yet, suck power from my lawyer's parking lot when I go there. Just the idea of that sends a thrill through me!
I'll buy a laptop that has a methanol fuel cell in it when I can plug my laptop into any wall socket to recharge my methanol supply. Sure methanol may last way longer, but the readily availiable supply of electricity far outweighs the benefits of the longer lasting fuel cell.
Bork!
I had a friend who went to jail for duplicating data. The problem was, he was using a color photocopier at his work to duplicate $20 bills. And all he did was use a photocopier!
Other than that, I agree with your post... Much of this should be civil only. I also think that Corporations have so much power to put individuals behind bars, yet no individual can put a corporation behind bars. However, legally, corps are people too. I don't get it.
Bork!
"The non-theist or atheist however, can only say, "morality is determined by man"."
I disagree. As a non-theist, I find most of Morality to be simple logic. Morality is universally obvious, much like 1+1 = 2 is. It's that obvious, at least for me. Much like our understanding of mathematics, our understanding of morality has improved over the ages. For people who lag behind in the brains department, I sure am glad there's the authoritarian organization called the Church.
YAY! GO YOU!
But Tim Horton's girls are really hot!
I hear there that everyone there votes for a group agenda.
Or at least mentioned.
How does his crime sentence compare to other crimes that involve copying? I wonder how it would compare to, say, wholesale duplication of $100 bills? Everyone always compares piracy to software theft, when in reality, it's much closer to counterfeiting. Both the copyright system and the monetary system rely on government imposed scarcity. The hard question that some people here on Slashdot need to ask themselves, is can the economy survive if that artificial scarcity is removed.
In my personal opinion, I believe the world would be a much better (and radically different) place if copyright is cut short. In this hectic information age, can anyone imagine a world where copyright only lasted 5 years from publication? I'd love to see a reasoned debate on this issue.
And, for my question to the convicted pirate... What is his personal view on the politics of copyright, and what his views (if any) are of what life would be like under such a system.
Bork!
I guess you described my complaint... How can one possibly call these individuals "System Experts" when they aren't even given basic hardware training. Knowing what RAM looks like would benefit most MCSE's. Perhaps realistically the "S" in MCSE should stand for software. Who would think that Microsoft would use deceptive advertising?
I had a relative (not by blood thank goodness) who just became an MCSE. He decided to celebrate by buying himself a really expensive system on credit, that had way more power than he was really going to use. I figured I would test his abilities, so I gave him an older SCSI hard drive to install on his system as an extra drive. When he opened up his box, he knocked his ram half out of it's socket. The system naturally wouldn't boot. He spent weeks trying to fix the computer himself in embarrasment. After a month of this computer sitting useless, and his wife getting angry seeing bills come in on a useless computer, she ordered him to call me. Right in front of him, I opened the case, looked around, noticed the ram, pushed it in, closed up, and the system booted just fine. It took me perhaps 5 minutes, and he was red faced.
It just goes to show, you actually need brains behind the MCSE to make things work. Apart from a semester of a 9th grade computer class which taught me how to use obsolete Apple II's and program in BASIC, I havn't taken a single class.
Bork!
"When the line between reality and fantasy becomes THIS blurred, people need to take a step away from things."
..
"Jezus christ, those people"...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
POT! KETTLE! BLACK!
Or use computers, for that matter. As far as I can tell, this thing was designed to help dumb people build things that are too complex for them to build in the first place.
I recently bought a large and complex second-hand desk that was unassembled. I deduced how it goes together, and I assembled it myself. Two parts were missing. I contacted the manufacturer, who was kind enough to ship them to me free of charge all the way from Quebec. The even shipped me a manual so I could verify how it goes together.
All this new technology will do is further confuse the dumb people, and insult the intelligence of people who know how figure it out. After 4 years with a computer, my boss still asks me how to save attachments in her outlook express, or how to scan and save documents. Things like computer interfaces or "Peg A goes into slot B" technologies have reached the limit of simplification. There is some technology that can't (and shouldn't) be made simpler. The only thing my boss (and dumb people trying to assemble things) would benefit more from is if someone did the work for them.
The money and effort spent on this new technology would be better served if the company started shipping pre-built furniture.
"He's recorded a few of his best pieces"
So you're saying that he's recording evidence of himself impersonating a federal agent... I wonder if any of the smarter telemarketers who doubted him thought of playing a reverse trick on him, and pretending to be the real FBI when phoning him.
If that would be recorded, I would pay good money to hear it.
"But guess who owns the studios? the RIAA."
By that comment, you betray the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about. I've seen many nice studios in my time, and not a one of them was owned, or even influenced by the RIAA. Then again, I'm in Canada. Does this make a difference? Are you Americans really that far gone?
Bork!