It's before my coffee and I am feeling crabby. I just hate this subtle fear and doubt BS which is based on lies and false comparisons.
I couldn't just click-and-install a wireless card driver just drew a blank look from me
I don't know why this persists. People appear to be so trained to tolerate Windows' annoyances that I guess the following is "one click":
Hunt for a CD and put it in the drive.
Try to figure out what to click on the manufacturer's custom welcome screen or trial-and-error figuring out what to click on the CD or oh wait don't actually insert the CD now wait until Windows asks for a driver disk.
Agree to a EULA that strips you of all rights.
Answer some questions you don't understand the consequences to or meaning of.
Boggle at a scary message that these drivers are not approved by Microsoft and take the "not recommended" approach of installing them anyway.
Reboot so it can "finish the installation."
Reboot again to finally have the device recognized.
why the hell should I need to edit config files and compile stuff?
For the n-billionth time, nobody does this anymore, and hasn't for a long time. The real fact is that 99% of Ubuntu users don't even need to be aware that there is such a thing as a "driver" because the vast majority of hardware works immediately as soon as you attach it to your computer. Your plea for "more drivers" is meant only to scare people into thinking Linux doesn't have them, when in reality a distribution like Ubuntu comes with many, many times more drivers than Windows does.
some very basic things continue to confuse me - eg. setting VLC as the default video player for all video files
So now we take a task that is not basic -- configuring file associations or default applications is something that very few users attempt -- but call it "very basic" to make it seem like fundamental functionality is missing. Good job, there.
Except in the case of the exceedingly rarely seen 6 2/3-sided hexagon.
Actually, this started me on a certain ultra geeky (and trust me it's ultra) train of thought that went like this: "Hexagon" doesn't really mean "six sides." I imagine the editors probably thought a significant number of readers wouldn't know what a "hexagon" is and so added "six sided" to clarify. So, thinks I, there's a fair share of ignorance of word origins, because we're talking about the Greek hexagonos, which has two parts, hexa and gonos, for 6 and angle, so really a hexagon is a shape with six angles. The fact that you end up having six sides is purely coincidental.
Then my thoughts degenerated into the kind of dry, retarded humor that is the hallmark of every member of my family. It's too bad, I thought, that we don't use the Latin form for '6' instead of the Greek, because then we could make jokes about sexagons all day long. Yeah, I know. Dry and retarded.
Good luck fighting the Halliburtons of the world when you aren't allowed to learn about them anymore because all information is locked down on a "need to know" basis via nth-gen DRM, and even if you do manage to learn something, you aren't allowed to discuss it without facing felony charges because the other party didn't pay for a license. How about getting your priorities straight?
The only way to "beat" Microsoft is to come out with something better.
WRONG. Thank you for playing.
Microsoft products are utter crap. They are, and have always been, 10 years behind everyone else. Microsoft got where they are by establishing a choke-hold on the PC-clone OEM market and by very clever lock-in with formats and protocols. This led to application network effects, which greatly increases the inertia of the first two.
Any given MacBook off the shelf today is in every way vastly superior to any given Windows notebook. Server space is no better. One application per Windows server? Sweet fancy Moses, what junk. People keep buying Microsoft products because of one of the three reasons I listed: it's either no choice from vendors, no choice because of interoperability problems, or no choice because your applications only run on Windows. No one chooses Microsoft because it's the best technology out there, and no one will choose alternatives simply because they are better.
No, the only way to "beat" Microsoft (directly) is to have government chop off Microsoft's hands so that they can no longer strangle the marketplace. If that's not done, then eventually the market will move in a direction Microsoft wasn't expecting and they'll be irrelevant in the new space. (This may have already happened, we'll see.)
Unfortunately your ideas are worse than the status quo.
There is nothing "obvious" about how the law is constructed in the U.S. The law is, essentially, our ongoing attempt to define what American life is supposed to be like. This is because in the U.S. we do not have a single localized ethnic tribal tradition to guide our behavior, we're a mishmash of lots of those, so we need to rely on law to figure out how we want to behave toward each other. (As other countries experience this move toward "mishmashiness" they'll have to do the same work.) Not only ethnicities: also different modes of living, economic strategies, political leanings, heck even psychosocial schemas have to be accommodated. Over time, U.S. law has actually done a pretty marvelous job at accommodation of widely disparate groups of people with competing agendas, despite some short-term failings.
The point of a civil suit is to bring a case before a (hopefully) learned, equitable judge and a small group of peers so that an unclear situation can be sorted out. If the situation was not debatable, there would be no need for the suit! We only have lawsuits when one party thinks A should be the outcome and the other party thinks B should be the outcome.
Imagine that Farmer Ted sues Rancher Bill because Bill's steer are grazing Ted's land without permission. Ted thinks he's totally right, but Bill claims it wasn't him. During the early part of discovery it becomes less clear that it was actually Bill's cattle doing the grazing. It still might have been, but it's just not clear at this time. The proper course of action is for Ted to drop the suit and possibly bring it again later if better evidence arises. Under your system this would be impossible. You would rather have the judge find for Bill, make Ted pay Bill's legal costs, and then later on we find out it was Bill after all. Is that the kind of justice you prefer?
Your solution for suing corporations is even worse. You would have it so that throngs of impoverished, unemployed morons could mass-sue corporations indiscriminately based on shoddy evidence, or even no evidence at all (they can fish for wrongdoing during the trial), just hoping to score in the "corporate lawsuit lottery." What have they got to lose? 70% of zero? Not so great for the corporations trying to bring a product to market and make some money, but can't, because they've had to defend against three thousand lawsuits alleging the CEO used alien mind-control rays to make your dog pee on the carpet.
Yes, there are abusers of the current system, but that is one reason why we bring these cases before a judge and some peers. As others posters here have said, this is an example of the system working appropriately. The system is fine. In fact, it's working great in this example, because the RIAA is terrified of having this argued in front of a jury of ordinary people, who will almost certainly identify them as the abusers they are, and find against them.
The funny thing is, this is exactly the type of stereotyping that Americans are often criticized for. I was talking about a month ago with a very worldly fellow who is from France originally but has lived in something like 8 countries. I was quite surprised that he had the following unshakable beliefs:
100% of Americans love GWB
100% of Americans love Fox News
100% of Americans know absolutely nothing about geography, politics, or history
American life is exactly like what you see in Hollywood movies and American TV shows
When I tried to bait him with "French people wear berets, play tiny accordions, and never bathe" he didn't understand what I was doing. "See," he said, "Americans are completely ignorant about other cultures." Righto.
Apparently you are new to the field of Hollywood accounting. Surely after all the "expenses" have been deducted, Curse of the Were-rabbit will be shown to have lost $100 million or so.
if you think of what things were like in the NT/9x days, where you had to choose between an OS which wouldn't work at home(and didn't even always work in the corporate environment) or an OS which was about as secure as a sieve, we've come a long way
Um, no, we have not come a long way. Perhaps it is correct to say that Microsoft have come a long way, but nothing more. MS are just now implementing features that were commercially available in the bad old "NT/9x days" from other OS vendors. The truth is, we've basically tread water for a decade waiting for MS to catch up, while watching MS (unethically, if not illegally) strangle better technologies the whole time.
If you really mean this as an example of being cheated, I'd suggest that perhaps you could modify your bid strategy to not include bidding $100 for something worth $50.
Ah, but this presupposes that the buyer knows (or can find out) the price that the market will bear for an item. There are a lot of times you cannot simply "do your research" and know what an item is supposed to be worth. Imagine this same buyer went into a brick-and-mortar store with $100 in his pocket. He brought $100 because he does not know how much the item he wants is going to cost. When he sees it on the shelf for $50, he is pleasantly surprised, because even though he had been prepared to spend up to $100, he now discovers that the price the market as a whole will bear is about $50. He then spends the $50 he saved on something else.
Using your logic, this buyer should still be charged $100 because, well, that's how much he came into the store with. Or, maybe, the price should not be marked on the shelf, and when he brings the item to the cashier and asks how much it costs, the cashier should reply "How much have you got?" Our dear buyer does not save $50 and does not spend it on something else. This is a harm to the marketplace, and is the fundamental reason why we make laws against fraud.
This week it very, very, nearly reached £1 = $2 for the first time in my lifetime.
You must be about 13 years old then. I seem to recall that back in the early 90s the USD:GBP exchange rate was about 2:1.
Also, the U.S. inflation rate is currently about 2.5%, which, while not spectacularly good, is not that terrible either. By contrast, the U.K. inflation rate is at 2.7%. Maybe try waiting until you need to shave before doling out your stunning economic advice.
- retraining people
- doc-> odf conversion (especially concerned about automatic conversion of documents-especially macros in doc files)
- and of course very concerned about support (there is no company's supporting Open Office - or they have no real business plans) what they see as the greatest risk migrating to ODF !!
Ahem. Surely you knew that these "problems" with OSS are in fact the Holy Triumvirate of Fuddiness? You could time-travel back to 1980 and see IBM naming almost identical "problems" with competitor's products.
Retraining: This is a non-factor, because workers need to be retrained on each new version of MS product as well.
Document conversion: This is a non-factor for two reasons. (1) There is absolutely no need to mass-convert existing.doc files. (2) MS changes their file formats too, so you'll have the same problem either way.
Support: This is a non-factor for two reasons. (1) No ordinary worker, while using Office, calls up MS support. They turn to their own IT staff. (2) For things that the IT staff needs support on, the MS support staff are inadequate, so you're going to need to turn to specialized support sources, which, aha!, is exactly what you need to do with FLOSS.
Many cultures totally unrelated to Judeaism and Christianity have records of the Flood.
There are some word games being played here. First, "many" cultures is quite a stretch. There are some half-dozen cataclysm stories that parallel the flood story told in Genesis.
Second, calling these other stories "unrelated" is false. Greek and Sumerian cultures were "unrelated" to Hebrew culture? I think not. A large weight of evidence suggests the opposite of what you assert. These ancient civilizations were quite mobile and it is highly likely that these "unrelated" flood stories have a common root, which was passed among these people by oral storytelling tradition, through which it became localized.
Third, these stories are not "records" any more than the story of Paul Bunyan is a "record" of how the Grand Canyon was formed. Now, I am not arguing whether the story has a basis in fact; believe about that what you will. I am only saying that it does not qualify as a historical record.
I also resent the anti-creator bias that is displayed in slashdot as well as many (not all) scientific circles.
I submit that what you perceive as "anti-creator bias" is instead an aversion to black box thinking. If you see the work of God in the emergence of life on Earth, more power to you. However, we cannot postulate that the emergence of life is caused by a creator, because we then fall off the map of science. All the mechanics become hidden away inside a magical black box where we cannot see them. And since we cannot make observations, there is no way to prove any of the claims wrong. Ergo, science is impossible.
There is no bias present, only a desire to do proper science.
I might be exposing my ignorance on the subject (I have had hardly any economics education), but it seems to me that there should be something we can do as a pre-emptive release valve for wealth maldistribution. We start out with a relative imbalance, but not too much, say 70/30. This imbalance is not due to unfair advantage. It's just because some people are a more [industrious|clever|capable] than others [1].
The "problem" starts when the accumulation of assets among the more-capable accelerates, a phenomenon that I believe is due to the selfish exploitation of systems. (This is quite probably an evolutionary strategy, so it may not go away soon.) This, of course, is precisely what Marx was on about, and his prediction is that the imbalance will grow to the point that the have-nots will rise up in arms and simply take back what was taken from them (i.e., the release valve is opened). I think history has shown this to be fairly accurate, the French, American, and Russian revolutions being three recent examples.
So accepting that this is the inevitable result of accelerating imbalance, an intelligent course of action would be the invention of an economic mechanism that effectively bleeds wealth back to the proletariat, thereby providing release and staving off revolution. This should make sense to the wealthy as well! A stable system in which they are assured their wealth ought to be better than a short-term system that will lead to their heads being cut off.
Even though there are some mechanisms like this already (e.g., progressive taxation), they are apparently not effective. What's the blockage here? Why can't this be figured out? I am enough of a cynic to think that the main blockage is the arrogant belief of the wealthy that they can suppress revolution indefinitely. However, has there been any good mechanism proposed to address this issue?
[1] cf. Beggars in Spain for a good treatment of the economic responsibility of the more-capable viz. the less-capable.
I admit to not having read a great deal of the comments so far. I assume there are the usual high temperatures.
What I want to post about, though, is that this is not a bad idea. I don't care what you think about Bill or Microsoft, there is one thing that is indisputable: Bill (and by extension MS under Bill) is fantastic as the underdog. Look at the evidence, the history. Whenever Bill has been the low man he has always shone and come out on top.
Now, for our Rush audience, it might be necessary to say it, the U.S.A. is in an underdog position right now. We have a gigantic amount of things we need to dig out from underneath of. We need to get back to our more respectable levels of performance. Plus, our William is more-or-less politically unaligned. He'd essentially have to run as a 3rd party -- another underdog situation for him to triumph over, which, as we know, he excels at. Also he has the large-scale management experience necessary for the job.
So we have a man who is godly when put in the exact position demanded here, and has the experience and charisma required to make it happen (seriously, Bill is a geek but he is capable of motivating people to his point of view). Why would we not want to have him as President?
I'm waiting for the day for the MMORPG that doesn't show the player his skill/stats.
Well, in a sense, this has been done. I have been directly or indirectly involved with MUDs that kept such things out of view. It still makes little difference. There is always, always a segment of the player base that will be stat-hunters -- they'll find some yardstick and a way grind up their performance on that yardstick.
I fear "automatic" matching of criminals and trying to catch them, e.g., when they renew their license. Here is a true false-positive story that happened to me. I went to renew my driver's license, and the nice lady informed me that she could not issue me a license because I had had mine revoked in Maryland due to felony charges. Now, I have never committed a felony and I have never been to Maryland, let alone had a driver's license there. The nice lady was unpersuaded by this information. The database said I was a felon in Maryland, and that was the end of the story.
After much yelling about the problem, it was finally revealed that the real felon's name was exactly like mine except for one letter, and some moron doing data entry had gone ahead and decided we were the same person, based solely on name. Since this data problem was local to the "matching" system they had implemented, and not prevalent in who-knows-how-many databases, it was cleared up with a little investigation. However, if that "match" had been replicated into other systems, I could very well have had a nasty time clearing my name. The lady at the DMV was 100% convinced that I was a felon based on what the computer told her. Quite likely, no one else would have believed I was innocent either.
I can see this system playing havoc with people too. I have met people with no connection to each other but who nevertheless look virtually identical.
This is the clue bat. This is your head. This is the clue bat hitting your head.
As others have already pointed out, it's not copacetic to sell merchandise like that. You think you can start selling Star Wars t-shirts and Lucasfilm will be OK with that? Not likely.
But that is entirely beside the point. The point is that Universal believes this is a valuable franchise, and acts to protect it. They are not trying to shut down the fan community. Simply, there are people at Universal who think a Serenity sequel is a possibility, and they want to maintain control over that so when they fund the next movie they're going to get a proper ROI. That is all.
It's basically good news that they want to defend this.
Well said. If a technology is implemented that by default prohibits the use of all copyrighted works until permission can be secured, with remote (and possibly retroactive) revocation, I think the movie studios and record companies are going to be in for a very, very rude awakening (as well as most of the business world). Business "steals" (sic) copyrighted material all the time. It's a very normal thing to do. But if they want to clamp down on our taking, I think we should clamp down on their taking as well. Too bad there will be no more source material for new records or movies!
Dear Lord, my bullshit detector just pegged. Please note: I am rather a lefty and in favor of social programs to help those who are poor or otherwise disadvantaged.
The US has a fairly high rate of poverty and starvation
That "poverty level" is by U.S. standards, which means USD 4700 per person per year. That seems pretty low, but consider that most of the world is at approximately USD 700 per person per year. So our "poor" are nearly 7 times better off than the average person around the world. Also, starvation is virtually impossible in the U.S., even for homeless people. In fact, the very poor are one of the most likely groups in the U.S. to be grossly overweight.
The richest country in the world has over 10% of its population not able to meet basic needs
This is predicated on your phony insinuation about poverty in the United States. Below the poverty line it is possible in many parts of the country to not only meet basic needs but to have comforts that are totally unknown in most of the world. Hell, our market basket includes things like beer, tobacco, computers, TV, jewelry, and sports equipment.
I know it's superfashionable to bash the U.S. at every opportunity, and frankly it is embarrassing that we have a problem with health care in this country (but that spans the middle class as well, so it's not a poverty issue), but at least pick on the problems we actually have rather than make up new ones.
I am not politically aligned with most of the environmental movement[1]. However, there is sufficient scientific inquiry here to warrant acceptance. That is, science has been done. The questioning of method and interpretation has already been done. Peer review has been done. The preponderance of evidence says this is real. It's not worth debating the methods of the scientists anymore.
[1] On the other hand, I am big fan of conservation, i.e., the wise use of resources. We are not plants; by our nature we use up resources. We just need to decide how to use them most wisely.
As a sibling post points out, this is totally false. I have been involved in several free projects, and at one time was the lead maintainer of one. It is true that sometimes you don't feel like bug-fixing. But sometimes you do feel like it, and it is pretty rewarding to send out a new release with no (or few) new features but a hundred bug fixes. It's just that, since it's my time, gratis, I feel like I should get to spend it how I want to.
And, frankly, who gives a rip about "beating" proprietary software? Not me.
Slashdot Mirror
It's before my coffee and I am feeling crabby. I just hate this subtle fear and doubt BS which is based on lies and false comparisons.
I don't know why this persists. People appear to be so trained to tolerate Windows' annoyances that I guess the following is "one click":
For the n-billionth time, nobody does this anymore, and hasn't for a long time. The real fact is that 99% of Ubuntu users don't even need to be aware that there is such a thing as a "driver" because the vast majority of hardware works immediately as soon as you attach it to your computer. Your plea for "more drivers" is meant only to scare people into thinking Linux doesn't have them, when in reality a distribution like Ubuntu comes with many, many times more drivers than Windows does.
So now we take a task that is not basic -- configuring file associations or default applications is something that very few users attempt -- but call it "very basic" to make it seem like fundamental functionality is missing. Good job, there.
I believe multiple playable races was one of the named features of GW2.
Except in the case of the exceedingly rarely seen 6 2/3-sided hexagon.
Actually, this started me on a certain ultra geeky (and trust me it's ultra) train of thought that went like this: "Hexagon" doesn't really mean "six sides." I imagine the editors probably thought a significant number of readers wouldn't know what a "hexagon" is and so added "six sided" to clarify. So, thinks I, there's a fair share of ignorance of word origins, because we're talking about the Greek hexagonos, which has two parts, hexa and gonos, for 6 and angle, so really a hexagon is a shape with six angles. The fact that you end up having six sides is purely coincidental.
Then my thoughts degenerated into the kind of dry, retarded humor that is the hallmark of every member of my family. It's too bad, I thought, that we don't use the Latin form for '6' instead of the Greek, because then we could make jokes about sexagons all day long. Yeah, I know. Dry and retarded.
Good luck fighting the Halliburtons of the world when you aren't allowed to learn about them anymore because all information is locked down on a "need to know" basis via nth-gen DRM, and even if you do manage to learn something, you aren't allowed to discuss it without facing felony charges because the other party didn't pay for a license. How about getting your priorities straight?
WRONG. Thank you for playing.
Microsoft products are utter crap. They are, and have always been, 10 years behind everyone else. Microsoft got where they are by establishing a choke-hold on the PC-clone OEM market and by very clever lock-in with formats and protocols. This led to application network effects, which greatly increases the inertia of the first two.
Any given MacBook off the shelf today is in every way vastly superior to any given Windows notebook. Server space is no better. One application per Windows server? Sweet fancy Moses, what junk. People keep buying Microsoft products because of one of the three reasons I listed: it's either no choice from vendors, no choice because of interoperability problems, or no choice because your applications only run on Windows. No one chooses Microsoft because it's the best technology out there, and no one will choose alternatives simply because they are better.
No, the only way to "beat" Microsoft (directly) is to have government chop off Microsoft's hands so that they can no longer strangle the marketplace. If that's not done, then eventually the market will move in a direction Microsoft wasn't expecting and they'll be irrelevant in the new space. (This may have already happened, we'll see.)
Unfortunately your ideas are worse than the status quo.
There is nothing "obvious" about how the law is constructed in the U.S. The law is, essentially, our ongoing attempt to define what American life is supposed to be like. This is because in the U.S. we do not have a single localized ethnic tribal tradition to guide our behavior, we're a mishmash of lots of those, so we need to rely on law to figure out how we want to behave toward each other. (As other countries experience this move toward "mishmashiness" they'll have to do the same work.) Not only ethnicities: also different modes of living, economic strategies, political leanings, heck even psychosocial schemas have to be accommodated. Over time, U.S. law has actually done a pretty marvelous job at accommodation of widely disparate groups of people with competing agendas, despite some short-term failings.
The point of a civil suit is to bring a case before a (hopefully) learned, equitable judge and a small group of peers so that an unclear situation can be sorted out. If the situation was not debatable, there would be no need for the suit! We only have lawsuits when one party thinks A should be the outcome and the other party thinks B should be the outcome.
Imagine that Farmer Ted sues Rancher Bill because Bill's steer are grazing Ted's land without permission. Ted thinks he's totally right, but Bill claims it wasn't him. During the early part of discovery it becomes less clear that it was actually Bill's cattle doing the grazing. It still might have been, but it's just not clear at this time. The proper course of action is for Ted to drop the suit and possibly bring it again later if better evidence arises. Under your system this would be impossible. You would rather have the judge find for Bill, make Ted pay Bill's legal costs, and then later on we find out it was Bill after all. Is that the kind of justice you prefer?
Your solution for suing corporations is even worse. You would have it so that throngs of impoverished, unemployed morons could mass-sue corporations indiscriminately based on shoddy evidence, or even no evidence at all (they can fish for wrongdoing during the trial), just hoping to score in the "corporate lawsuit lottery." What have they got to lose? 70% of zero? Not so great for the corporations trying to bring a product to market and make some money, but can't, because they've had to defend against three thousand lawsuits alleging the CEO used alien mind-control rays to make your dog pee on the carpet.
Yes, there are abusers of the current system, but that is one reason why we bring these cases before a judge and some peers. As others posters here have said, this is an example of the system working appropriately. The system is fine. In fact, it's working great in this example, because the RIAA is terrified of having this argued in front of a jury of ordinary people, who will almost certainly identify them as the abusers they are, and find against them.
The funny thing is, this is exactly the type of stereotyping that Americans are often criticized for. I was talking about a month ago with a very worldly fellow who is from France originally but has lived in something like 8 countries. I was quite surprised that he had the following unshakable beliefs:
When I tried to bait him with "French people wear berets, play tiny accordions, and never bathe" he didn't understand what I was doing. "See," he said, "Americans are completely ignorant about other cultures." Righto.
Apparently you are new to the field of Hollywood accounting. Surely after all the "expenses" have been deducted, Curse of the Were-rabbit will be shown to have lost $100 million or so.
Um, no, we have not come a long way. Perhaps it is correct to say that Microsoft have come a long way, but nothing more. MS are just now implementing features that were commercially available in the bad old "NT/9x days" from other OS vendors. The truth is, we've basically tread water for a decade waiting for MS to catch up, while watching MS (unethically, if not illegally) strangle better technologies the whole time.
Ah, but this presupposes that the buyer knows (or can find out) the price that the market will bear for an item. There are a lot of times you cannot simply "do your research" and know what an item is supposed to be worth. Imagine this same buyer went into a brick-and-mortar store with $100 in his pocket. He brought $100 because he does not know how much the item he wants is going to cost. When he sees it on the shelf for $50, he is pleasantly surprised, because even though he had been prepared to spend up to $100, he now discovers that the price the market as a whole will bear is about $50. He then spends the $50 he saved on something else.
Using your logic, this buyer should still be charged $100 because, well, that's how much he came into the store with. Or, maybe, the price should not be marked on the shelf, and when he brings the item to the cashier and asks how much it costs, the cashier should reply "How much have you got?" Our dear buyer does not save $50 and does not spend it on something else. This is a harm to the marketplace, and is the fundamental reason why we make laws against fraud.
You must be about 13 years old then. I seem to recall that back in the early 90s the USD:GBP exchange rate was about 2:1.
Also, the U.S. inflation rate is currently about 2.5%, which, while not spectacularly good, is not that terrible either. By contrast, the U.K. inflation rate is at 2.7%. Maybe try waiting until you need to shave before doling out your stunning economic advice.
- retraining people
- doc-> odf conversion (especially concerned about automatic conversion of documents-especially macros in doc files)
- and of course very concerned about support (there is no company's supporting Open Office - or they have no real business plans) what they see as the greatest risk migrating to ODF !!
Ahem. Surely you knew that these "problems" with OSS are in fact the Holy Triumvirate of Fuddiness? You could time-travel back to 1980 and see IBM naming almost identical "problems" with competitor's products.
torrent plz kthx
There are some word games being played here. First, "many" cultures is quite a stretch. There are some half-dozen cataclysm stories that parallel the flood story told in Genesis.
Second, calling these other stories "unrelated" is false. Greek and Sumerian cultures were "unrelated" to Hebrew culture? I think not. A large weight of evidence suggests the opposite of what you assert. These ancient civilizations were quite mobile and it is highly likely that these "unrelated" flood stories have a common root, which was passed among these people by oral storytelling tradition, through which it became localized.
Third, these stories are not "records" any more than the story of Paul Bunyan is a "record" of how the Grand Canyon was formed. Now, I am not arguing whether the story has a basis in fact; believe about that what you will. I am only saying that it does not qualify as a historical record.
I submit that what you perceive as "anti-creator bias" is instead an aversion to black box thinking. If you see the work of God in the emergence of life on Earth, more power to you. However, we cannot postulate that the emergence of life is caused by a creator, because we then fall off the map of science. All the mechanics become hidden away inside a magical black box where we cannot see them. And since we cannot make observations, there is no way to prove any of the claims wrong. Ergo, science is impossible.
There is no bias present, only a desire to do proper science.
I might be exposing my ignorance on the subject (I have had hardly any economics education), but it seems to me that there should be something we can do as a pre-emptive release valve for wealth maldistribution. We start out with a relative imbalance, but not too much, say 70/30. This imbalance is not due to unfair advantage. It's just because some people are a more [industrious|clever|capable] than others [1].
The "problem" starts when the accumulation of assets among the more-capable accelerates, a phenomenon that I believe is due to the selfish exploitation of systems. (This is quite probably an evolutionary strategy, so it may not go away soon.) This, of course, is precisely what Marx was on about, and his prediction is that the imbalance will grow to the point that the have-nots will rise up in arms and simply take back what was taken from them (i.e., the release valve is opened). I think history has shown this to be fairly accurate, the French, American, and Russian revolutions being three recent examples.
So accepting that this is the inevitable result of accelerating imbalance, an intelligent course of action would be the invention of an economic mechanism that effectively bleeds wealth back to the proletariat, thereby providing release and staving off revolution. This should make sense to the wealthy as well! A stable system in which they are assured their wealth ought to be better than a short-term system that will lead to their heads being cut off.
Even though there are some mechanisms like this already (e.g., progressive taxation), they are apparently not effective. What's the blockage here? Why can't this be figured out? I am enough of a cynic to think that the main blockage is the arrogant belief of the wealthy that they can suppress revolution indefinitely. However, has there been any good mechanism proposed to address this issue?
[1] cf. Beggars in Spain for a good treatment of the economic responsibility of the more-capable viz. the less-capable.
I admit to not having read a great deal of the comments so far. I assume there are the usual high temperatures.
What I want to post about, though, is that this is not a bad idea. I don't care what you think about Bill or Microsoft, there is one thing that is indisputable: Bill (and by extension MS under Bill) is fantastic as the underdog. Look at the evidence, the history. Whenever Bill has been the low man he has always shone and come out on top.
Now, for our Rush audience, it might be necessary to say it, the U.S.A. is in an underdog position right now. We have a gigantic amount of things we need to dig out from underneath of. We need to get back to our more respectable levels of performance. Plus, our William is more-or-less politically unaligned. He'd essentially have to run as a 3rd party -- another underdog situation for him to triumph over, which, as we know, he excels at. Also he has the large-scale management experience necessary for the job.
So we have a man who is godly when put in the exact position demanded here, and has the experience and charisma required to make it happen (seriously, Bill is a geek but he is capable of motivating people to his point of view). Why would we not want to have him as President?
Well, in a sense, this has been done. I have been directly or indirectly involved with MUDs that kept such things out of view. It still makes little difference. There is always, always a segment of the player base that will be stat-hunters -- they'll find some yardstick and a way grind up their performance on that yardstick.
Maybe you'd be disappointed on multiple levels then. It looks like Chaos is only about Tzeentch right now.
I fear "automatic" matching of criminals and trying to catch them, e.g., when they renew their license. Here is a true false-positive story that happened to me. I went to renew my driver's license, and the nice lady informed me that she could not issue me a license because I had had mine revoked in Maryland due to felony charges. Now, I have never committed a felony and I have never been to Maryland, let alone had a driver's license there. The nice lady was unpersuaded by this information. The database said I was a felon in Maryland, and that was the end of the story.
After much yelling about the problem, it was finally revealed that the real felon's name was exactly like mine except for one letter, and some moron doing data entry had gone ahead and decided we were the same person, based solely on name. Since this data problem was local to the "matching" system they had implemented, and not prevalent in who-knows-how-many databases, it was cleared up with a little investigation. However, if that "match" had been replicated into other systems, I could very well have had a nasty time clearing my name. The lady at the DMV was 100% convinced that I was a felon based on what the computer told her. Quite likely, no one else would have believed I was innocent either.
I can see this system playing havoc with people too. I have met people with no connection to each other but who nevertheless look virtually identical.
This is the clue bat. This is your head. This is the clue bat hitting your head.
As others have already pointed out, it's not copacetic to sell merchandise like that. You think you can start selling Star Wars t-shirts and Lucasfilm will be OK with that? Not likely.
But that is entirely beside the point. The point is that Universal believes this is a valuable franchise, and acts to protect it. They are not trying to shut down the fan community. Simply, there are people at Universal who think a Serenity sequel is a possibility, and they want to maintain control over that so when they fund the next movie they're going to get a proper ROI. That is all.
It's basically good news that they want to defend this.
Well said. If a technology is implemented that by default prohibits the use of all copyrighted works until permission can be secured, with remote (and possibly retroactive) revocation, I think the movie studios and record companies are going to be in for a very, very rude awakening (as well as most of the business world). Business "steals" (sic) copyrighted material all the time. It's a very normal thing to do. But if they want to clamp down on our taking, I think we should clamp down on their taking as well. Too bad there will be no more source material for new records or movies!
First they have to get past the Eastern Alliance with the help of some friendly androids!
Dear Lord, my bullshit detector just pegged. Please note: I am rather a lefty and in favor of social programs to help those who are poor or otherwise disadvantaged.
That "poverty level" is by U.S. standards, which means USD 4700 per person per year. That seems pretty low, but consider that most of the world is at approximately USD 700 per person per year. So our "poor" are nearly 7 times better off than the average person around the world. Also, starvation is virtually impossible in the U.S., even for homeless people. In fact, the very poor are one of the most likely groups in the U.S. to be grossly overweight.
This is predicated on your phony insinuation about poverty in the United States. Below the poverty line it is possible in many parts of the country to not only meet basic needs but to have comforts that are totally unknown in most of the world. Hell, our market basket includes things like beer, tobacco, computers, TV, jewelry, and sports equipment.
I know it's superfashionable to bash the U.S. at every opportunity, and frankly it is embarrassing that we have a problem with health care in this country (but that spans the middle class as well, so it's not a poverty issue), but at least pick on the problems we actually have rather than make up new ones.
I am not politically aligned with most of the environmental movement[1]. However, there is sufficient scientific inquiry here to warrant acceptance. That is, science has been done. The questioning of method and interpretation has already been done. Peer review has been done. The preponderance of evidence says this is real. It's not worth debating the methods of the scientists anymore.
[1] On the other hand, I am big fan of conservation, i.e., the wise use of resources. We are not plants; by our nature we use up resources. We just need to decide how to use them most wisely.
And, frankly, who gives a rip about "beating" proprietary software? Not me.