Yeh, brilliant. And then, after your favourite band sells a quarter of a million albums, they find that they're left owning... well, nothing, because they sold off all the rights to their profits in the IPO. Then we get the same dull article about whiny stars who thought they could have their cake and eat it, except instead of "recording companies" insert "shareholders".
Wouldn't it be terrible if Dijkstra had patented the semaphore? Computer science would have come to an end!
And then presumably risen Lazarus-like a few years later, when the patent expired?
Remember, a patent is a guarantee that the patented innovation will pass into the public domain on a specific date in the future, and a means of ensuring that the public has access to the ideas behind the patent immediately. In the absence of patents, people who had invented new algorithms would simply keep them secret, probably forever.
I think Kissinger might have actually been right about, say, being an English professor and having to defend your Marxist interpretation of some obscure Middle English poem against a rival's Feminist interpretation, but in the natural sciences it seems to be possible to actually do some constructive work.
Natural sciences overcompensated inferiority complex, classic example of. In actual fact, academic politics is much much worse in the natural sciences departments (though real-world political differences are usually less). The reason for this is that you are completely wrong; two interpretations of a poem are usually complementary, but natural sciences require expensive equipment, putting the academics in direct competition with one another for funding.
Why isn't every single member of Worldcom's Board of Directors in jail right now?
Because, you tool, they have not yet been found guilty of a criminal offence in a court of law, a minor technicality which some people still regard as important.
If you're not careful, mass media comment that the defendant in a criminal trial is guilty can be taken to be contempt of court. It certainly makes it much more difficult to find a jury that can give the defendant a fair trial, and is in general a rather shitty thing to do.
Go on, then, explain to the court how the capitalisation of local line costs in de novo telecom operations is the wrong accounting policy. Then prove that it is so obviously the wrong accounting policy that no reasonable man could have thought otherwise. Then prove that the particular officers of WorldCom who are up for trial were the ones responsible for the adoption of this policy, rather than auditors, consultants, other managers. Then prove that they adopted it with the intent to commit criminal fraud. Then, maybe, you'll have some credibility in your glib assertion that the defendant is guilty without need for a trial. This is a complex case, and the assertion that the defendants are guilty of criminal fraud (rather than of some lesser offence of the kind generically described as "accounting irregularities") is not supportable.
Ahhh, the slashdot court fool writes again
on
WorldCom Fraud Doubles
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I love how the news outlets are saying, "error", "irregularity", "problem", as if this was all some sort of tragic accident, instead of laying out the obvious truth, "criminal fraud committed with full knowledge it was a crime".
Strangely, Michael, it is a convention of the "old media" that one does not refer to someone as having committed a "criminal fraud committed with full knowledge it was a crime" until that person has been found guilty in a court of having done so.
For Christ's sake. Why don't you just go the whole hog and shout "Get a rope! Let's lynch the bastards now!".
If slashdot posters started referring to Michael's "libellous editorial comments committed with full knowledge that he was libelling someone" rather than "stupid remarks", "arrogant editorialising" or whatever, you'd be out of a job in no time.
That's not to say that some people can't be more enlightened than others. But for the vast herd out there, on average, consciousness is simply not a significant factor. Not even a second- or third-order effect. Consciousness is marginal.
Does this not have the implication that there would be nothing very terrible about rounding up large numbers of the "vast herd" and painlessly slaughtering them? Has he thought through the consequences of this view?
Do you have a translation of the judgement from which you are drawing these implications, or are you just making Chicken Little "the sky is falling!" prophecies on the basis of no real knowledge of the specifics of the case?
Oh get real. You've been sold a bill of goods by a bad martial arts teacher.
First of all, Tai-chi is based on the philosophy of Taosim
Wrong. This is more fairy stories. The only documented histories of tai chi chu'an place its beginnings squarely in the Chen village in Henan province. The modern inhabitants of Chen village are not Taoists, and there is no evidence that they ever were. Fanciful lineages taking tai chi back to Taoist sages or to Wudang Mountain have no verifiable basis.
Some of them purport to teach these "dim mak killer touches", but that is NOT in the TaiChi curriculum.
Really? Or is it not on the curriculum of your particular school, because you have a fraud for a teacher who is making it up as he goes along. The links between tai chi and traditional chinese medicine are well known.
As for sparring and combat, I can testify that I've seen taichi practitioner sparring. They can be as fast a furious as any other styles.The difference lies in how the forces are applied and directed: not something obvious to the casual observer
Like hell. People have been laughing at traditional chinese martial arts types for the last twenty years for claiming to have loads of "hidden force" powers that nobody can detect, but the message isn't apparently getting through.
As for jujitsu, there doesn't seem to be any techniques there that is not already covered in the various "qiam na xao" (Capture & Grasping Hand) techniques. Nothing special here.
Except that ju jitsu players train to apply these techiques to resisting opponents. Big difference.
oh yeh, the "martial applications" of tai chi. Which are so deadly that they can never be demonstrated. Give over. I am prepared to concede the possibility that there might once have been a martial art which had the name "tai chi". But the connection between that and the art taught under that name today are as tenuous as... well, the "Lineages" of most traditional chinese martial arts instructors taking them back to the Shaolin Temple or Yang Lu-Chan. They're fairy stories. You can pretend to yourself that any human movement might be a concealed attack if you've got an active enough imagination (I've seen an instructor claim with a straight face that the opening movement of the form is actually a deadly strike with the backs of the wrists). But the fact remains that tai chi practitioners don't spar and don't train for combat, and those few people who do claim to practice "combat tai chi" invariably cross-train with a system that works (usually a form of jujitsu)
Why should a sports or artforms be disqualified as 'martial arts' just because they are impractical in this age? Archery and Greco-Roman wrestling are important contests within the Olympics. I don't see any spectators laughing
You are surely kidding if you think people don't laugh at Greco-Roman wrestlers. It's an absolutely risible sport. And it is a sport, not a "martial art" in the ordinary language meaning of the phrase. Archery is certainly not impractical, as Ted Nugent will tell you.
If you are only interested in kiling and maiming
Hang on, you're the one defending tai chi with all those "dim mak killer touches", eye gouges and strikes to the throat! I'm interested in being able to defend myself in a manner consistent with the law of the land and common humanity. Which is to say, to be able to trade a punch for a punch, or to be able to grapple someone to submission. Heck, I'd be happy to learn wrist locks and aikido nage if they worked on resisting opponents, which they don't.
I'll never forget what my Hapkido teacher told us, "This is NOT a self defense course. If you want to practice self defense, buy a pair a good running shoes and practice screaming HELP while running at top speed down the street."
Christ almighty, you've nearly collected the whole set of useless martial arts; all you need now is tai chi and perhaps a little bit of boxercise. A Hapkido teacher would be right in saying that, although one might ask him why he wasted so much of his time doing it then, since Hapkido has few health benefits and looks like shit.
With the commencement of the twentieth century where machine guns can kills thousands and bombs can kill millions, all schools of martial arts have had to introspect on their internal value and where their future may lie.
With the continuing popularity of nightclubs, bars and dance halls, it is ridiculous to suggest that hand-to-hand combat without weapons is not still highly relevant to the lives of a lot of people. Anything calling itself a "martial" art which leaves people no more able to fight than if they'd spent the time playing darts ought to be prepared to be laughed at.
It sounds like you've never felt an Aikido throw or joint lock
Right. Because I've never attacked anyone by sticking my right arm out and running toward them. Because I don't think that a good way to initiate hostilities is to stand in front of someone and grab hold of their right wrist. These locks are potentially useful for keeping control of an already subdued opponent, but absolutely impossible to apply on anyone who is in a position to resist.
Trust me, some of them are very effective
For bullying students in staged demonstrations, yes. For actual combat application, no. Ten years of mixed-martial arts competition ought to have cleared this up once and for all; nobody has ever won an UFC bout or similar with an aikido joint lock, except in so far as aikido shares a couple of techniques with practial styles, from its jujitsu heritage. Aikido is jujitsu for people who don't like fighting.
The idea in these types of throws is to lead the person to a position where they are very vunerable and offbalence and then make sure that they make an effort to fall safely. Often, this means that they need to jump a bit, but like I said, if they didn't then they'd end up a whole lot worse
Yeah right. Have you seen the film under discussion? A student takes a good long run-up, sticks his arm out, reaches the Venerable Founder, then flips. Over and over again. It's laughable.
If you ever train with an aikido class, try slapping uke round the jaw with your free hand the moment he applies his funky wristlock. I guarantee that 1) he releases the lock (if he doesn't go down like a sack of shit) and 2) you will be thrown out and never allowed back because "we don't want people who are just here to fight".
If someone attacks you and they get close &"enough", and you know your shit, then you can push them around a bit to make them fall.
"Shit" is about right. Even if you can work aikido on a resisting subject, rather than a cooperating, uke, their next move is to grab hold of your legs and pull you down to the ground with them. At which point you're fucked because aikido doesn't have any groundwork.
It's a lot of fun to leap around pretending to be thrown and all that, but as a martial art, aikido is about on the level of tai chi.
Like hell. Unfortunately, a lot of aikidoka have been suckered by that roll of film into studying a useless martial art.
What he lacked in mobility and strength he made up for in grace and economy of movement, and I watched as he would toss aside the students with little hand movements or slow sweeping gestures.
Not quite. What he lacked in mobility and strength, he made up for in being the venerated founder of a school in Japan, where it would be considered appalling behaviour to cast any aspersions on the Venerated One's declining powers.
The students could attack in piles, and still they would be tossed aside like leaves.
More like "the students ran at him in piles and then leapt aside like leaves as he waved a hand at them". Half sub-consciously, the students cooperated in being thrown. The idea that Ueshiba could have done anything remotely similar on a resisting body flies in the face of any non-mystical biomechanics.
It was really magical to watch such an old man possessed of such power.
Alternatively, it was really disgusting to watch an old man posessed of such vanity.
Ueshiba was a genuine fighter as a young man, but during that period, he practiced jujitsu/tai-jutsu. It was only after he founded his own school in 1942 of a state-sponsored, Shinto-flavoured dumbed down taijutsu that he started becoming a cult and staging demonstrations for gullible Westerners.
On the other hand, Ali beat Liston, and Tyson beat a lot of big guys when he still had his lateral movement. A big man's jab is hard to beat, but big men who jab often do so with their feet planted, making them vulnerable to a smaller guy who circles.
Give over. Aikido is notoriously a useless martial art for actual combat against anyone who is not one of your students, in a gym or dojo, who you have just told to run toward you with their right wrist stuck out.
I doubt there are thousands of budding artists out there saying "gee I'd love to make music, but then it would all get ripped off by freeloaders, I think I'll work a desk job instead...
Actually there are quite a few; this is why the Vietnamese- language pop music industry is dominated by Americans and Australians who can afford to spend money on making themselves into pop stars in Viet Nam as a sort of hobby. There is more or less no indigenous pop because it's impossible to support oneself by selling recordings.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF is a "known plaintext" attack on a one time pad?
Jesus, don't we have enough fat women in the world already?
Yeh, brilliant. And then, after your favourite band sells a quarter of a million albums, they find that they're left owning ... well, nothing, because they sold off all the rights to their profits in the IPO. Then we get the same dull article about whiny stars who thought they could have their cake and eat it, except instead of "recording companies" insert "shareholders".
And then presumably risen Lazarus-like a few years later, when the patent expired?
Remember, a patent is a guarantee that the patented innovation will pass into the public domain on a specific date in the future, and a means of ensuring that the public has access to the ideas behind the patent immediately. In the absence of patents, people who had invented new algorithms would simply keep them secret, probably forever.
Natural sciences overcompensated inferiority complex, classic example of. In actual fact, academic politics is much much worse in the natural sciences departments (though real-world political differences are usually less). The reason for this is that you are completely wrong; two interpretations of a poem are usually complementary, but natural sciences require expensive equipment, putting the academics in direct competition with one another for funding.
Because, you tool, they have not yet been found guilty of a criminal offence in a court of law, a minor technicality which some people still regard as important.
If you're not careful, mass media comment that the defendant in a criminal trial is guilty can be taken to be contempt of court. It certainly makes it much more difficult to find a jury that can give the defendant a fair trial, and is in general a rather shitty thing to do.
Go on, then, explain to the court how the capitalisation of local line costs in de novo telecom operations is the wrong accounting policy. Then prove that it is so obviously the wrong accounting policy that no reasonable man could have thought otherwise. Then prove that the particular officers of WorldCom who are up for trial were the ones responsible for the adoption of this policy, rather than auditors, consultants, other managers. Then prove that they adopted it with the intent to commit criminal fraud. Then, maybe, you'll have some credibility in your glib assertion that the defendant is guilty without need for a trial. This is a complex case, and the assertion that the defendants are guilty of criminal fraud (rather than of some lesser offence of the kind generically described as "accounting irregularities") is not supportable.
Strangely, Michael, it is a convention of the "old media" that one does not refer to someone as having committed a "criminal fraud committed with full knowledge it was a crime" until that person has been found guilty in a court of having done so.
For Christ's sake. Why don't you just go the whole hog and shout "Get a rope! Let's lynch the bastards now!".
If slashdot posters started referring to Michael's "libellous editorial comments committed with full knowledge that he was libelling someone" rather than "stupid remarks", "arrogant editorialising" or whatever, you'd be out of a job in no time.
No it isn't. If you know that X is prime, you know that its factors are 1 and X.
Yes, I know, I know.
If this were true, surely abortion would be illegal?
Does this not have the implication that there would be nothing very terrible about rounding up large numbers of the "vast herd" and painlessly slaughtering them? Has he thought through the consequences of this view?
Larry Augustin done nothing but sell stock from day one my friends
You said it buddy.
Oh sorry, this is slashdot.
First of all, Tai-chi is based on the philosophy of Taosim
Wrong. This is more fairy stories. The only documented histories of tai chi chu'an place its beginnings squarely in the Chen village in Henan province. The modern inhabitants of Chen village are not Taoists, and there is no evidence that they ever were. Fanciful lineages taking tai chi back to Taoist sages or to Wudang Mountain have no verifiable basis.
Some of them purport to teach these "dim mak killer touches", but that is NOT in the TaiChi curriculum.
Really? Or is it not on the curriculum of your particular school, because you have a fraud for a teacher who is making it up as he goes along. The links between tai chi and traditional chinese medicine are well known.
As for sparring and combat, I can testify that I've seen taichi practitioner sparring. They can be as fast a furious as any other styles.The difference lies in how the forces are applied and directed: not something obvious to the casual observer
Like hell. People have been laughing at traditional chinese martial arts types for the last twenty years for claiming to have loads of "hidden force" powers that nobody can detect, but the message isn't apparently getting through.
As for jujitsu, there doesn't seem to be any techniques there that is not already covered in the various "qiam na xao" (Capture & Grasping Hand) techniques. Nothing special here.
Except that ju jitsu players train to apply these techiques to resisting opponents. Big difference.
Why should a sports or artforms be disqualified as 'martial arts' just because they are impractical in this age? Archery and Greco-Roman wrestling are important contests within the Olympics. I don't see any spectators laughing
You are surely kidding if you think people don't laugh at Greco-Roman wrestlers. It's an absolutely risible sport. And it is a sport, not a "martial art" in the ordinary language meaning of the phrase. Archery is certainly not impractical, as Ted Nugent will tell you.
If you are only interested in kiling and maiming
Hang on, you're the one defending tai chi with all those "dim mak killer touches", eye gouges and strikes to the throat! I'm interested in being able to defend myself in a manner consistent with the law of the land and common humanity. Which is to say, to be able to trade a punch for a punch, or to be able to grapple someone to submission. Heck, I'd be happy to learn wrist locks and aikido nage if they worked on resisting opponents, which they don't.
Christ almighty, you've nearly collected the whole set of useless martial arts; all you need now is tai chi and perhaps a little bit of boxercise. A Hapkido teacher would be right in saying that, although one might ask him why he wasted so much of his time doing it then, since Hapkido has few health benefits and looks like shit.
With the commencement of the twentieth century where machine guns can kills thousands and bombs can kill millions, all schools of martial arts have had to introspect on their internal value and where their future may lie.
With the continuing popularity of nightclubs, bars and dance halls, it is ridiculous to suggest that hand-to-hand combat without weapons is not still highly relevant to the lives of a lot of people. Anything calling itself a "martial" art which leaves people no more able to fight than if they'd spent the time playing darts ought to be prepared to be laughed at.
Right. Because I've never attacked anyone by sticking my right arm out and running toward them. Because I don't think that a good way to initiate hostilities is to stand in front of someone and grab hold of their right wrist. These locks are potentially useful for keeping control of an already subdued opponent, but absolutely impossible to apply on anyone who is in a position to resist.
Trust me, some of them are very effective
For bullying students in staged demonstrations, yes. For actual combat application, no. Ten years of mixed-martial arts competition ought to have cleared this up once and for all; nobody has ever won an UFC bout or similar with an aikido joint lock, except in so far as aikido shares a couple of techniques with practial styles, from its jujitsu heritage. Aikido is jujitsu for people who don't like fighting.
The idea in these types of throws is to lead the person to a position where they are very vunerable and offbalence and then make sure that they make an effort to fall safely. Often, this means that they need to jump a bit, but like I said, if they didn't then they'd end up a whole lot worse
Yeah right. Have you seen the film under discussion? A student takes a good long run-up, sticks his arm out, reaches the Venerable Founder, then flips. Over and over again. It's laughable.
If you ever train with an aikido class, try slapping uke round the jaw with your free hand the moment he applies his funky wristlock. I guarantee that 1) he releases the lock (if he doesn't go down like a sack of shit) and 2) you will be thrown out and never allowed back because "we don't want people who are just here to fight".
"Shit" is about right. Even if you can work aikido on a resisting subject, rather than a cooperating, uke, their next move is to grab hold of your legs and pull you down to the ground with them. At which point you're fucked because aikido doesn't have any groundwork.
It's a lot of fun to leap around pretending to be thrown and all that, but as a martial art, aikido is about on the level of tai chi.
What he lacked in mobility and strength he made up for in grace and economy of movement, and I watched as he would toss aside the students with little hand movements or slow sweeping gestures.
Not quite. What he lacked in mobility and strength, he made up for in being the venerated founder of a school in Japan, where it would be considered appalling behaviour to cast any aspersions on the Venerated One's declining powers.
The students could attack in piles, and still they would be tossed aside like leaves.
More like "the students ran at him in piles and then leapt aside like leaves as he waved a hand at them". Half sub-consciously, the students cooperated in being thrown. The idea that Ueshiba could have done anything remotely similar on a resisting body flies in the face of any non-mystical biomechanics.
It was really magical to watch such an old man possessed of such power.
Alternatively, it was really disgusting to watch an old man posessed of such vanity.
Ueshiba was a genuine fighter as a young man, but during that period, he practiced jujitsu/tai-jutsu. It was only after he founded his own school in 1942 of a state-sponsored, Shinto-flavoured dumbed down taijutsu that he started becoming a cult and staging demonstrations for gullible Westerners.
On the other hand, Ali beat Liston, and Tyson beat a lot of big guys when he still had his lateral movement. A big man's jab is hard to beat, but big men who jab often do so with their feet planted, making them vulnerable to a smaller guy who circles.
Give over. Aikido is notoriously a useless martial art for actual combat against anyone who is not one of your students, in a gym or dojo, who you have just told to run toward you with their right wrist stuck out.
Actually there are quite a few; this is why the Vietnamese- language pop music industry is dominated by Americans and Australians who can afford to spend money on making themselves into pop stars in Viet Nam as a sort of hobby. There is more or less no indigenous pop because it's impossible to support oneself by selling recordings.
Yes, there is every chance that the enemy could become at least as peace-loving as the notoriously Quaker-like Jamaican Yardies.