"...you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's my job."
adolph eichmann - when asked if it "was difficult to send tens of thousands of people to their deaths"
anything's okay if you're "just doing your job". moral judgement is irrelevant if you draw a paycheque. lovely.
Re:Not to be a troll here but...
on
Superbowl XXXVII
·
· Score: 1
yeah... the us airforce only used a couple of 500 lb bombs to kill four canadians in afghanistan.
that laser sighting thing works real good. can hit an ally at 300 meters!
patriot act? that's peanuts. we need to subject the u.s. government to a full-scale implementation of their cointelpro program.
remember, in 1971 the citizens committee to investigate the fbi broke into the philidelphia fbi office and made off with all sorts of enlightening papers... a run down of all that is here.
Lots of unqualified people, without any problem solving skills and proper education got hired, and that pushed the companies down the drain.
exactly! except the unqualified people were the business suit types who had no idea about what the technology was capable of, were willing to promise everything to the vencaps regardless of technical feasibility, didn't understand the basics of price/earnings in establishing a company's worth and had no clue on how to run a business whatsoever.
so-called "entrepeneurs" who felt the buzz of the "new" economy invalidated all formal understanding of traditional business practices were what blew up the dot coms. not the coders.
It'd also be interesting to see if there's a correlation between having a SHITTY ECONOMY and the rise of unemployment in fields who have MORE WORKERS THAN THERE IS DEMAND. But surely that's not possible. Blogging must be the cause.
the original post said "correlation" not "causal relation". it is interesting to note that if you make a graph of ice cream sales and drowning deaths over the course of a year the curves are almost identical. from this do we conclude that ice cream causes drowing? hm.
on a purely anecdotal note: i started my blog the day my two-weeks' notice arrived. of course the idea wasn't original, i copied it from a friend who started his blog after getting laid off...
Re: microsoft is not a hardware company
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 2
While their primary product may be software, microsoft sells lots of hardware... I'd bet quite a few slashdotters have MS mice, joysticks, or even keyboards. I even saw a wireless router
so, are you saying i can build my own opitcal intellimouse with off-the-shelf parts? or whip up an xbox in my garage?
Re:"Switching" to the Mac?
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I find it ironic that as much as folks complain about MS' monopolistic practices, look at how much more difficult it is to piece together your own Mac
microsoft is not a hardware company. they make software which is closed, proprietary and holds a monopoly position. apple makes both hardware (mostly closed, although in many places standards-compliant) and software (much closed, but much open).
Apple wouldn't have had to create a "switch" campaign if they hadn't reversed their decision to license out their OS.
why not? they still would have a different hardware architecture (whether it was made by umax or apple) and a different os.
As I recall, Power Computing at one point sold more Mac-OS running computers than Apple did!
which is why the macsimilies were cancelled. apple is primarily a hardware company and uses the hardware profits to subsidize the r&d costs of the os. if hardware profits are cut, the os suffers, thus decreasing the attractiveness of the entire platform and further eating marketshare.
Their market share keeps declining, even as the quality and innovation of their products is on the upswing. How strange.
this statement could be interpreted as meaning that market share and quality/innovation of product are somehow causally related. if this were true we'd have been watching betamax tapes and driving bmw's for the last ten years. don't trust me... trust derrick from o'reilley.
It's eerily similar to watching socialist command economies flounder and fall, while free-market ones thrive and give consumers more choices at better prices.
no... it's earily familiar to watching monarchies flounder and fail while revolutionaries thrive. my analogy is no better or worse than yours. both are unsubstantiated and ubsubstantiatable and serve to do little other than inflame.
polls are done of major media outlet reporters, they almost unanimously (over 95%)
even the media give sources:) a link might be appreciated. if you can't find a reference you might try making up some anecdotal evidence instead.
I find it funny that the US version of right vs. left is almost completely opposite of the old USSR version.
er. are you sure you have the left/right thing down pat? just because a regime is authoritarian in nature does not make it left or right wing. i think maybe you're confusing left/right with liberal/conservative. this material was covered in highschool when i went.
the US media is dominated by a left-wing ideology
vague assertion at best. i would submit that the opposite is true, and i have a link to a source to back it up (see it's easy!)
here. it will require you to go to the library and take out this book and actually read it though. not too much of a challenge, i'm sure.
p.s. - if anyone can actually find the "liberal media" please tell me! i will gladly subscribe if i can find it.
from what I've heard over several years of this debate, the artists don't get shit
bang on. i've been in the music scene for about 15 years as a promoter, dj/radio hack, musician, etc. and i have seen a lot of bands get completely screwed by majors. the worst case was of the primrods who signed to dgc. after recording the album, the geffenites decided it wasn't commercially viable enough and decided to not release it. when the primrods tried to farm it out, geffen told them that was against their contract. the album was geffens and it would sit in the can. of course the primrods got no money for the album... eventually, geffen came to them to get back the advance paid to the band on the album (which was never released)sales. the primrods wound up in the hole, with an album that was never released. eventually, the band broke up due to the pressure.
thanks mr. geffen, you destroyed the best band this city has ever seen.
don't take my word though, steve albini (who has probably produced at least three albums in your collection) did the math on why bands should stay away from the majors. it's here.
if you are in a rock band you must read this article. the primrods didn't.
or better yet, buy independent. note that only major lables (ie, labels that support their own distribution network such as bmg, sony, dgc &c.) are participants in the riaa. buying independent not only diverts money from the majors, it helps promote diversity and competition.
previously, pyrosohpy said:
when I can let my boss go due to "tough" financial times just like I can
you responded: That's called "quitting" and finding another job.
obviously you understand that in the contract between employee and employer the power held by the employee is the withholding of labour (quitting). so what is your opposition to unionism? it is merely the self-organization of a labour force to consolidate the power of withholding labour for purposes of bargaining with the employers (who are, themselves, organized for the consolidation of power).
to call labour "lamers" is patently ridiculous. because people do work they are less deserving than those whose primary role is the provision of capital? if you were truly concerned about economic factors that were anti-meritocretous (ie, "elevate lamers") then you would do better to focus your energies on eliminating inheritances, equalizing access to education and removing the barriers of racism and sexism... not griping about labour organization.
As it is, fingerprints, eye scans, and DNA are much better than smell
not really. all the abovementioned methods require the participation of the identified person (well, you can lift someone's fingerprints from that wine glass... but to compare them you need to have good ink sheet ones).
odour can be detected surreptitiously... say when passing through an airplane security gate, and the person can be identified without being aware of it. if someone scans your retina, you'll notice. if they pick up your smell with a hidden sniffer you won't.
OpenBSD can not include material which includes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeley copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status
and consider that the reason theo isn't using the linux implementation as a hint is because the gpl is more restrictive than the bsd license.
this may also be the primary reason for refusing to sign the nda. it may be considered "more restrictive" (i certainly didn't get an nda with my copy of obsd 3.2)
now please have a cup of shut the fuck up yourself.
let me get this straight. your argument is: because some 15 year old copied this game, the price of the game goes up by a certain amount to compensate for that loss of revenue by the manufacturer. is that right?
a nice little piece of sophistry. sadly it relies on the *assumption* that those who copy software (or music or movies) would pay for them if they if the option to copy were not available. by and large i submit that premise is false.
while make an empirical judgement one way or the other is all but impossible, anecdotal evidence and common sense indicate that much of the high calibre software that is stolen is done by people who would not pay for it under any circumstances. would that college student shell out $700 for photoshop or just do without if all p2p networks were shutdown. i submit the latter.
in point of fact, software theft has proven to be beneficial to many software companies. photoshop which (under the mac at least) was embarassingly easy to copy in the early days resulted in every starving student having a copy. when these starving students entered the workforce they brought their skills and preferences with them resulting in photoshop becoming the industry standard raster graphics app.
this has happened time and time again. remember "ready set go"? of course not: they went out of business in the early nineties. why? too hard to copy. design students developed a preference for a more easily ripped-off layout app: quarkXpress.
the comparison to cars is even worse sophistry. the cost of any product can be broken down into its three main components: labour, materials and cost-of-capital (don't take my word for it, ask adam smith or karl marx). the mercedes has a set cost per unit for labour and material. software, on the other hand, has zero costs for labour, material and capital above what is required to create the original. programmers, designers, beurocrats, bankers &c. cost the same whether you make one copy of photoshop or a billion. the only variable cost is the cost of media (the cds) but since p2p copying doesn't necessitate a media, it's free too.
if you're going to argue against piracy that's fine. i may even be inclined to side with you (i am both a programmer and a musician) but please try to develop a real argument first.
Slashdot Mirror
i think it's because they bought NeXT (steve job's old company), makers of nextstep/openstep os which was based on bsd... (source)
for north americans who find www.php.net too slow, there is a faster one at: us2.php.net
"...you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's my job."
adolph eichmann - when asked if it "was difficult to send tens of thousands of people to their deaths"
anything's okay if you're "just doing your job". moral judgement is irrelevant if you draw a paycheque. lovely.
yeah... the us airforce only used a couple of 500 lb bombs to kill four canadians in afghanistan.
that laser sighting thing works real good. can hit an ally at 300 meters!
do this now:
/etc/hosts
host slashdot.org | awk '{print $4" " $1} >>
remember, in 1971 the citizens committee to investigate the fbi broke into the philidelphia fbi office and made off with all sorts of enlightening papers... a run down of all that is here.
exactly! except the unqualified people were the business suit types who had no idea about what the technology was capable of, were willing to promise everything to the vencaps regardless of technical feasibility, didn't understand the basics of price/earnings in establishing a company's worth and had no clue on how to run a business whatsoever.
so-called "entrepeneurs" who felt the buzz of the "new" economy invalidated all formal understanding of traditional business practices were what blew up the dot coms. not the coders.
the original post said "correlation" not "causal relation". it is interesting to note that if you make a graph of ice cream sales and drowning deaths over the course of a year the curves are almost identical. from this do we conclude that ice cream causes drowing? hm.
on a purely anecdotal note: i started my blog the day my two-weeks' notice arrived. of course the idea wasn't original, i copied it from a friend who started his blog after getting laid off...
so, are you saying i can build my own opitcal intellimouse with off-the-shelf parts? or whip up an xbox in my garage?
microsoft is not a hardware company. they make software which is closed, proprietary and holds a monopoly position. apple makes both hardware (mostly closed, although in many places standards-compliant) and software (much closed, but much open).
Apple wouldn't have had to create a "switch" campaign if they hadn't reversed their decision to license out their OS.
why not? they still would have a different hardware architecture (whether it was made by umax or apple) and a different os.
As I recall, Power Computing at one point sold more Mac-OS running computers than Apple did!
which is why the macsimilies were cancelled. apple is primarily a hardware company and uses the hardware profits to subsidize the r&d costs of the os. if hardware profits are cut, the os suffers, thus decreasing the attractiveness of the entire platform and further eating marketshare.
Their market share keeps declining, even as the quality and innovation of their products is on the upswing. How strange.
this statement could be interpreted as meaning that market share and quality/innovation of product are somehow causally related. if this were true we'd have been watching betamax tapes and driving bmw's for the last ten years. don't trust me... trust derrick from o'reilley.
It's eerily similar to watching socialist command economies flounder and fall, while free-market ones thrive and give consumers more choices at better prices.
no... it's earily familiar to watching monarchies flounder and fail while revolutionaries thrive. my analogy is no better or worse than yours. both are unsubstantiated and ubsubstantiatable and serve to do little other than inflame.
... but you do write UNIX.
this sounds a lot like "64k ought to be enough for anybody"
polls are done of major media outlet reporters, they almost unanimously (over 95%)
even the media give sources :) a link might be appreciated. if you can't find a reference you might try making up some anecdotal evidence instead.
I find it funny that the US version of right vs. left is almost completely opposite of the old USSR version.
er. are you sure you have the left/right thing down pat? just because a regime is authoritarian in nature does not make it left or right wing. i think maybe you're confusing left/right with liberal/conservative. this material was covered in highschool when i went.
the US media is dominated by a left-wing ideology
vague assertion at best. i would submit that the opposite is true, and i have a link to a source to back it up (see it's easy!) here. it will require you to go to the library and take out this book and actually read it though. not too much of a challenge, i'm sure.
p.s. - if anyone can actually find the "liberal media" please tell me! i will gladly subscribe if i can find it.
bang on. i've been in the music scene for about 15 years as a promoter, dj/radio hack, musician, etc. and i have seen a lot of bands get completely screwed by majors. the worst case was of the primrods who signed to dgc. after recording the album, the geffenites decided it wasn't commercially viable enough and decided to not release it. when the primrods tried to farm it out, geffen told them that was against their contract. the album was geffens and it would sit in the can. of course the primrods got no money for the album... eventually, geffen came to them to get back the advance paid to the band on the album (which was never released)sales. the primrods wound up in the hole, with an album that was never released.
eventually, the band broke up due to the pressure.
thanks mr. geffen, you destroyed the best band this city has ever seen.
don't take my word though, steve albini (who has probably produced at least three albums in your collection) did the math on why bands should stay away from the majors. it's
here.
if you are in a rock band you must read this article. the primrods didn't.
check them out:
matador
dischord
touch and go
mint
southern
merge
alternative tentacles
or, for the fast route, hit the google listing of record labels:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Music/Record_ Labels/
when I can let my boss go due to "tough" financial times just like I can
you responded:
That's called "quitting" and finding another job.
obviously you understand that in the contract between employee and employer the power held by the employee is the withholding of labour (quitting). so what is your opposition to unionism? it is merely the self-organization of a labour force to consolidate the power of withholding labour for purposes of bargaining with the employers (who are, themselves, organized for the consolidation of power).
to call labour "lamers" is patently ridiculous. because people do work they are less deserving than those whose primary role is the provision of capital? if you were truly concerned about economic factors that were anti-meritocretous (ie, "elevate lamers") then you would do better to focus your energies on eliminating inheritances, equalizing access to education and removing the barriers of racism and sexism... not griping about labour organization.
unionize!
everything. without people to actually do the work, the company has nothing.
not really. all the abovementioned methods require the participation of the identified person (well, you can lift someone's fingerprints from that wine glass... but to compare them you need to have good ink sheet ones).
odour can be detected surreptitiously... say when passing through an airplane security gate, and the person can be identified without being aware of it. if someone scans your retina, you'll notice. if they pick up your smell with a hidden sniffer you won't.
very insidious idea.
and your real name is "Wee"?
it's here
please note the section stating:
OpenBSD can not include material which includes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeley copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status
and consider that the reason theo isn't using the linux implementation as a hint is because the gpl is more restrictive than the bsd license.
this may also be the primary reason for refusing to sign the nda. it may be considered "more restrictive" (i certainly didn't get an nda with my copy of obsd 3.2)
now please have a cup of shut the fuck up yourself.
and what was wrong with localtalk?
we used to go down to the pc labs and invit all those poor netbeui users to come upstairs and watch us route.
"funny" indeed. do you even know that facts about that lawsuit?
try reading up on it.
a nice little piece of sophistry. sadly it relies on the *assumption* that those who copy software (or music or movies) would pay for them if they if the option to copy were not available. by and large i submit that premise is false.
while make an empirical judgement one way or the other is all but impossible, anecdotal evidence and common sense indicate that much of the high calibre software that is stolen is done by people who would not pay for it under any circumstances. would that college student shell out $700 for photoshop or just do without if all p2p networks were shutdown. i submit the latter.
in point of fact, software theft has proven to be beneficial to many software companies. photoshop which (under the mac at least) was embarassingly easy to copy in the early days resulted in every starving student having a copy. when these starving students entered the workforce they brought their skills and preferences with them resulting in photoshop becoming the industry standard raster graphics app.
this has happened time and time again. remember "ready set go"? of course not: they went out of business in the early nineties. why? too hard to copy. design students developed a preference for a more easily ripped-off layout app: quarkXpress.
the comparison to cars is even worse sophistry. the cost of any product can be broken down into its three main components: labour, materials and cost-of-capital (don't take my word for it, ask adam smith or karl marx). the mercedes has a set cost per unit for labour and material. software, on the other hand, has zero costs for labour, material and capital above what is required to create the original. programmers, designers, beurocrats, bankers &c. cost the same whether you make one copy of photoshop or a billion. the only variable cost is the cost of media (the cds) but since p2p copying doesn't necessitate a media, it's free too.
if you're going to argue against piracy that's fine. i may even be inclined to side with you (i am both a programmer and a musician) but please try to develop a real argument first.
internia does ebusiness.
is anyone else scared by this?