You have a right to screen them out. Companies don't have a right to screen them out for you without your consent. Companies do have the right to attempt to make money by showing advertisements; Despite the rhetoric here on/., it is not a case where 100% of the viewing audience is hostile to viewing commercials; if that were the case, then the ad-revenue model would have collapsed decades ago.
When you read a newspaper do you make sure to read ALL of the ads?
In fact, when I do read the newspaper, I read many of the advertisements, because many of the ads are promoting sales & discounts on stuff I want to buy.
Your counter-argument is flawed. You aren't compelled to watch TV commercials; you can record a TV show on a VCR and fast-forward through a commercial. The same goes for newspapers. Don't like an ad, turn the page. The ad-revenue model is based upon the assumption that an ad will appeal to at least someone, and give them an incentive to buy the goods being hawked. You are not forced to buy everthing or for that matter anything that you see in ads, but the law of averages has shown that enough people will buy something based on advertisements to make the model sustainable.
It appears that the reason ReplayTV got sued is because the boxes were automatically skipping commercials, without the user's intervention in any way. It could be argued that perhaps a user wants to see the commercials, but were prevented from doing so because the PVRs were doing so without prompting from the user.
Popups, on the other hand, and at least for now, require that a person enable popup blocking, so they are voluntarily requesting to skip "web commercials", and it can't be argued that a user might have missed a "feature" that they wanted to see. When Microsoft's next version of IE automagically disables popups, we'll have to see if they get their hands slapped in a simmilar manner to ReplayTV.
Also, it could be argued that popup and popunder advertisements are really a hack/loophole in the web standards (especially popups that trap on the back & close buttons), and that this was not the intended usage, so a user has the right to take "corrective" measures to disable them.
City of Doors is a good starting point. I belive that they are creating a Planescape Campaign setting, with customized hak packs. It doesn't look like they are recreating Torment, but you might be able to capitalize on what they have already built to help you out with remaking Torment. Good luck.
Why keeping a project in an alpha/beta state is a bad idea. I used to use E a long time ago, but they never went 1.0, and all the distros just started ignoring it, so now I use Sawfish.
This is a real pet peeve of mine. There are many OSS projects that do this. OpenSSL, anyone? The question is, why?? There must be a stable enough "beta" version of E that could be considered production quality, and should have been bumped up to 1.0 release status. I know that this is the case for OpenSSL, and a lot of other OSS projects out there. The fact is companies and non-hackers don't like adopting software that's advertised as "beta" quality. If you wan't your project recognized in the Real World, step up to the plate.
I know this sounds like a whining rant, but I belive that the plethora of OSS projects forever stuck in a "beta testing" phase is one reason for hesitation for mainstream adoption of Linux.
There is a better article here that shows that WSIS is mandated to try to solve world poverty. To quote:
But here, in Paragraph 2, is the tricky part. Not only does the WSIS want information for all, it wants "to harness the potential of information: Promote the development goals of the Millennium Declaration, namely the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger...
This is what I rant against. They want to use their agendas to promote the "Millenium Declaration", but yet leaders from despotic countries are scheduled to give speeches!
Nothing will ever get accomplished this way. Except maybe for the erosion of our 'Net rights, not only in the name of corporate interests, but in the name of despotic governments as well.
This summit is a betrayal of it's original ideals, and especially of the World's poor.
I'm sorry, but Free Internet For The Poor(tm) != cure for world poverty. When will people realize that the #1 root cause of poverty on a worldwide scale is corrupt despotic governments? So long as WSIS panders to the likes if Infidel Castro (who attended the summit in person), there will be no solution to poverty that univeral Internet access will solve. If the U.N. was serious about enacting their "Millenium Declaration" to eliminate world poverty, they should start bitchslapping governments that force their population into poverty. But no, they have to be "inclusive", so these asswipes still get their say, and no "solution" for global poverty will ever exist.
I use an old Pentium computer as a Linux router for my cable modem; I was an early adopter of broadband, before these router devices were affordable.
I had considered switching over to one of these devices (I have periodic problems with the hard disk failing, and I am running out of small hard disk replacements for it:-( ), but after seeing this little stunt, no way. I won't trust any router that I can't program myself now. When my Packard Hell quits, I'm gonna just buy another old used computer and turn it into a Linux router.
I would strongly urge anyone else savvy with Linux or even *BSD administration to strongly consider this route. Belkin just proved that you can't trust anyone to route your data with a "black box" solution. OK, maybe not Cisco, but are you gonna fork over $10k for a home router?;-)
(Yes I know Cisco just bought Linksys; I still won't trust 'em)
It bans "use tax". It prevents states from taxing ISPs based on people simply connecting to the internet, like they do now for phone lines.
State sales taxes on internet purchases have been, and are still legal, and congress is doing nothing to stop them.
In fact, right now it is only possible for a state to successfully collect sales taxes if the e-commerce provider has a presence in their state, but the states are banding together to try to rectify this "problem", by creating a uniform sales taxation scheme that will force an e-comerce dealer in, say, New Hampshire, to collect and forward California state sales taxes from anyone residing in California.
I was a senior programmer for a small software company, and myself and another senior programmer were designated the "front line" for filtering resumes and performing first round interviews for programming positions. One resume that came across my desk was from a Russian immigrant who had a doctorate's in computer science from the Univeristy of Moscow. His cover letter stated that he was looking for either a Junior or Senior Programmer position.
We rejected it right off hand -- he was either WAY too qualified for the position, and would abandon ship as soon as a better opportunity came along, or he was not nearly as bright as his Resume would indicate, and had fudged his way through University. Either way, PhD == Not qualified for a simple programmer's position anymore.
Unless you wish to become a professor or a top researcher/scientist at a prestegious lab somewhere, my advice is to stop at a Master's degree.
You cannot download this software from us if you are located in Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria
Wow, Ironically it's people (by that I mean the dissidents, not the terrorists) in those countries that desparately need software like this. This is the first concrete example that I have seen of the U.S. Encryption Export Embargo having the exact opposite effect of that desired. I wonder if you can apply for an exemption?
There is an interesting commentary on this over at the Digital Bits. It looks like some companies don't want backwards compatibilty with today's DVD, and they want to lock down the market and prevent cheap Chinese players from entering the HD-DVD arena.
If they do that, I think that you will see HD-DVD relegated to a LaserDisc sized niche market. Only true videophiles will spend hundereds of dollars to upgrade hardware, and hundreds more to replace their DVD collection with HD discs. The rest of the population will be perfectly happy with Anamorphic Widescreen DVD on a HD set.
The SysReq or "System Request" key is a key left over from the IBM 3090. 3270 Terminals (of which the PC could emulate with the appropriate expansion card) interact with mainframes in a very similar manner to Web browsers with a CGI form page -- everything is stored locally in a buffer, then sent in a transaction when the "Enter" button is pressed (which, by the way, is not the same as the PC Enter button, so when in 3270 emulation mode, the ALT keys are reassigned to this task). The terminal then waits for a response back from the mainframe, usually an entire page of text & input boxes to display all at once. The cycle is then repeated.
Occasionally, just like with web pages, the transaction would somehow get lost in the ether, and the terminal would just sit there forever waiting for a response back from the mainframe which would never come. This is where the SysRq key comes in. You would then press the SysRq key, and the transaction would be cancelled, and control is returned to the terminal.
So, in effect, the SysRq key is the Mainframe equivalent of the "Stop" button on a web browser.
The fact that the SysRq key made it onto IBM PC's shows you just what IBM's original strategy was with the PC market: A "brilliant" mainframe terminal; that is, a terminal capable of doing a little bit more than a simple 327X "Smart" terminal, but ultimately, as far as IBM was concerned, it was still a Mainframe's world, and the PC was ultimately beholden to it.
I rushed out and bought the Alien special edition boxed sets. The first two movies were repackagings of the laserdisc sets, and the last two were featureless movie only editions. Now they are coming out with a new "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set; new special editons for the first two, and real special editions for the other two.
Despite all of the excitement that seems to be surrounding this release, I won't buy it. I'll wait to replace my collection with the HD-DVD version, whenever that comes out. Same goes for the Matrix. How did I just know that they would eventually bundle that "Revisited" disc in with a super-super edition.
Fortunately, they did announce the movie and special edions of FOTR at the same time, so I didn't get burned on that one. From now on, though, any blockbuster that is release in a "Movie-only" or "Limited suppliments" edition, I defanately will not buy, and will hold out for the eventual "deluxe" edition.
I am really annoyed at the Alien set. I was certain that that would be the last time it was visited until HD-DVD. Crap.
I suspect that the argument is that the satellite TV pirates -- presumably the readers of the websites -- will economically profit from this, since they can use this knowledge to avoid paying DirectTV for its services.
I got modded down for saying this last time (and linking to Libertarian "propaganda"), but why does everyone continue to belive that the government can do a better job at space exploration than the private sector? What the hell, I've got karma to burn, so I'll rant.
$40 billion. The space station isn't even done. Humans haven't left Earth's orbit since the '70's. $40 billion. It sickens me.
I suppose the argument goes something like, "Private companies won't fund altruistic space flight, so the gov't has to foot the bill." "Companies are too nearsighted; they wouldn't appreciate the impact of expensive space based R&D."
Well, I could care less about argument #1. If you want a "feel good" space mission, fund it with Space Tourism. I think Lance Bass has some seed money for ya.
As far as agument #2 goes: I read an interesting proposal by Harry Browne (LP candidate for U.S. President in '00): Instead of direcly funding a space agency, the government could hold a "competition". Set aside $X billion, and offer it as a "reward" for the company or companies that meet the stated goal. Hell, this concept should be considered for lots of "expensive" R&D things: Offer a few billion to the first auto company to break our dependancy on oil, for example.
I truly belive that if 50% of that government spending had been set aside as an incentive for the private sector to go to space, we would have seen an appreciable return by now. There has to be people that would love to figure how how to mine asteroids, efficently harness energy from the sun, etc. Instead we can't even launch a Backdoor Boy into space. I mean, aside from the occasional tourist, has there been any appreciable return from that $40 billion yet? Not that I'm, aware of.
So, I'll say it again, and I'll link to it again, and you'll mod me down again: Privatize NASA.
This is an interesing development. However: I wonder how useful this language is on non-windows platforms. Let me explain.
You see, I have just started a new job that is heavily leveraging the.NET framework to bring an enterprise-level solution to fruition as quickly as possible. I evaluated c#, and decided that the greatest advantage c# brings to the table is rapid development through dynamic ActiveX/COM objects. That is: even though this is a compiled language, you code in it as though it was an interpreted language with ActiveX hooks. You would load any ActiveX object with a statement like
X = new Object(params);
and then you can immediately reference it with statements like
Z = X.func(param);
If you haven't written JScript, VBScript, or WSHScript, you have no idea just how amazingly powerful this is. A database connection & query takes around 4 lines of code. I was able to master in-code LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, aka Active Directory on Windoze boxes) queries in less than one day, having never touched an LDAP server in my life prior to that.
Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM. Each programming language still has to be manually extended in some form or another to recognise new APIs -- headers for compiled languages (and remembering to link to the libraries), or worse, "extension agent" coding for dynamic languages like Perl and Python (assuming the API code is a binary shared library). And APIs are almost never identical accross multiple languages.
So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port, because it is heavily dependent on the COM/ActiveX objects to get the real work done. Unless the.GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc.
PRI is a fairly libertarian group....These think tanks should have to pick names that say something about themselves
Unless they are being directly funded by the Libertarian Party, I don't see the conflict of interest that would require this disclosure. Just because they're mostly Libertarian, they should disclose their political affiation? Judical Watch doesn't disclose the fact that they are a bunch of right-wing Republicans who are interested in prosecuting Liberals, rather than actually monitoring the fairness of the Judical system.
Their position papers whould be read with an eye towards their agenda;
Of course they have an agenda -- that's why they published this paper. Everyone who has something to say has an agenda. I think that their "agenda" speaks for itself in the paper: they wnat to insure that Nanotech resarch isn't outlawed by the paranoid or the religious extremists. I really don't think that this agenda is in the exclusive domain of Libertarians, either. Otherwise, we have quite an uphill battle.
Disclosure: I'm one of those evil card-carrying Libertarians with an agenda to see Nanotech thrive in my lifetime.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a right to screen them out. Companies don't have a right to screen them out for you without your consent. Companies do have the right to attempt to make money by showing advertisements; Despite the rhetoric here on /., it is not a case where 100% of the viewing audience is hostile to viewing commercials; if that were the case, then the ad-revenue model would have collapsed decades ago.
When you read a newspaper do you make sure to read ALL of the ads?
In fact, when I do read the newspaper, I read many of the advertisements, because many of the ads are promoting sales & discounts on stuff I want to buy.
Your counter-argument is flawed. You aren't compelled to watch TV commercials; you can record a TV show on a VCR and fast-forward through a commercial. The same goes for newspapers. Don't like an ad, turn the page. The ad-revenue model is based upon the assumption that an ad will appeal to at least someone, and give them an incentive to buy the goods being hawked. You are not forced to buy everthing or for that matter anything that you see in ads, but the law of averages has shown that enough people will buy something based on advertisements to make the model sustainable.
It appears that the reason ReplayTV got sued is because the boxes were automatically skipping commercials, without the user's intervention in any way. It could be argued that perhaps a user wants to see the commercials, but were prevented from doing so because the PVRs were doing so without prompting from the user.
Popups, on the other hand, and at least for now, require that a person enable popup blocking, so they are voluntarily requesting to skip "web commercials", and it can't be argued that a user might have missed a "feature" that they wanted to see. When Microsoft's next version of IE automagically disables popups, we'll have to see if they get their hands slapped in a simmilar manner to ReplayTV.
Also, it could be argued that popup and popunder advertisements are really a hack/loophole in the web standards (especially popups that trap on the back & close buttons), and that this was not the intended usage, so a user has the right to take "corrective" measures to disable them.
City of Doors is a good starting point. I belive that they are creating a Planescape Campaign setting, with customized hak packs. It doesn't look like they are recreating Torment, but you might be able to capitalize on what they have already built to help you out with remaking Torment. Good luck.
Why keeping a project in an alpha/beta state is a bad idea. I used to use E a long time ago, but they never went 1.0, and all the distros just started ignoring it, so now I use Sawfish.
This is a real pet peeve of mine. There are many OSS projects that do this. OpenSSL, anyone? The question is, why?? There must be a stable enough "beta" version of E that could be considered production quality, and should have been bumped up to 1.0 release status. I know that this is the case for OpenSSL, and a lot of other OSS projects out there. The fact is companies and non-hackers don't like adopting software that's advertised as "beta" quality. If you wan't your project recognized in the Real World, step up to the plate.
I know this sounds like a whining rant, but I belive that the plethora of OSS projects forever stuck in a "beta testing" phase is one reason for hesitation for mainstream adoption of Linux.
This is what I rant against. They want to use their agendas to promote the "Millenium Declaration", but yet leaders from despotic countries are scheduled to give speeches!
Nothing will ever get accomplished this way. Except maybe for the erosion of our 'Net rights, not only in the name of corporate interests, but in the name of despotic governments as well.
This summit is a betrayal of it's original ideals, and especially of the World's poor.
I'm sorry, but Free Internet For The Poor(tm) != cure for world poverty. When will people realize that the #1 root cause of poverty on a worldwide scale is corrupt despotic governments? So long as WSIS panders to the likes if Infidel Castro (who attended the summit in person), there will be no solution to poverty that univeral Internet access will solve. If the U.N. was serious about enacting their "Millenium Declaration" to eliminate world poverty, they should start bitchslapping governments that force their population into poverty. But no, they have to be "inclusive", so these asswipes still get their say, and no "solution" for global poverty will ever exist.
I use an old Pentium computer as a Linux router for my cable modem; I was an early adopter of broadband, before these router devices were affordable.
:-( ), but after seeing this little stunt, no way. I won't trust any router that I can't program myself now. When my Packard Hell quits, I'm gonna just buy another old used computer and turn it into a Linux router.
;-)
I had considered switching over to one of these devices (I have periodic problems with the hard disk failing, and I am running out of small hard disk replacements for it
I would strongly urge anyone else savvy with Linux or even *BSD administration to strongly consider this route. Belkin just proved that you can't trust anyone to route your data with a "black box" solution. OK, maybe not Cisco, but are you gonna fork over $10k for a home router?
(Yes I know Cisco just bought Linksys; I still won't trust 'em)
It bans "use tax". It prevents states from taxing ISPs based on people simply connecting to the internet, like they do now for phone lines.
State sales taxes on internet purchases have been, and are still legal, and congress is doing nothing to stop them.
In fact, right now it is only possible for a state to successfully collect sales taxes if the e-commerce provider has a presence in their state, but the states are banding together to try to rectify this "problem", by creating a uniform sales taxation scheme that will force an e-comerce dealer in, say, New Hampshire, to collect and forward California state sales taxes from anyone residing in California.
This guy is just another Ambulance Chasing(tm) Lawyer; blaming everybody but the actual criminal for the crime.
When the hell are we going to see tort reform that puts these guys out of business?
Two memorable Corollary laws that I remember from a Murphy's Law calendar I once had:
-- Where there's a right, there's a wrong.
-- A fool and your money are soon partners.
Johnny was a Chemest
Johnny is no more.
For what Johnny thought was H2O,
was H2SO4.
Funny how my posts get ranked (-1, Troll) five times as often when I throw the "Esq." at the end of my name.
Man! so that's why my karma's suddenly in the toilet! Makes so much sense!
Sincerely,
Darl McBride, Esq.
I was a senior programmer for a small software company, and myself and another senior programmer were designated the "front line" for filtering resumes and performing first round interviews for programming positions. One resume that came across my desk was from a Russian immigrant who had a doctorate's in computer science from the Univeristy of Moscow. His cover letter stated that he was looking for either a Junior or Senior Programmer position.
We rejected it right off hand -- he was either WAY too qualified for the position, and would abandon ship as soon as a better opportunity came along, or he was not nearly as bright as his Resume would indicate, and had fudged his way through University. Either way, PhD == Not qualified for a simple programmer's position anymore.
Unless you wish to become a professor or a top researcher/scientist at a prestegious lab somewhere, my advice is to stop at a Master's degree.
You cannot download this software from us if you are located in Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria
Wow, Ironically it's people (by that I mean the dissidents, not the terrorists) in those countries that desparately need software like this. This is the first concrete example that I have seen of the U.S. Encryption Export Embargo having the exact opposite effect of that desired. I wonder if you can apply for an exemption?
There is an interesting commentary on this over at the Digital Bits. It looks like some companies don't want backwards compatibilty with today's DVD, and they want to lock down the market and prevent cheap Chinese players from entering the HD-DVD arena.
If they do that, I think that you will see HD-DVD relegated to a LaserDisc sized niche market. Only true videophiles will spend hundereds of dollars to upgrade hardware, and hundreds more to replace their DVD collection with HD discs. The rest of the population will be perfectly happy with Anamorphic Widescreen DVD on a HD set.
I think you are remembering the movie Alien Nation. In the movie, the "newcomers" (outer space alien refugees) were pejoratively called "slags".
According to dictionary.com, "slag" has no known real world pejorative meaning.
The SysReq or "System Request" key is a key left over from the IBM 3090. 3270 Terminals (of which the PC could emulate with the appropriate expansion card) interact with mainframes in a very similar manner to Web browsers with a CGI form page -- everything is stored locally in a buffer, then sent in a transaction when the "Enter" button is pressed (which, by the way, is not the same as the PC Enter button, so when in 3270 emulation mode, the ALT keys are reassigned to this task). The terminal then waits for a response back from the mainframe, usually an entire page of text & input boxes to display all at once. The cycle is then repeated.
Occasionally, just like with web pages, the transaction would somehow get lost in the ether, and the terminal would just sit there forever waiting for a response back from the mainframe which would never come. This is where the SysRq key comes in. You would then press the SysRq key, and the transaction would be cancelled, and control is returned to the terminal.
So, in effect, the SysRq key is the Mainframe equivalent of the "Stop" button on a web browser.
The fact that the SysRq key made it onto IBM PC's shows you just what IBM's original strategy was with the PC market: A "brilliant" mainframe terminal; that is, a terminal capable of doing a little bit more than a simple 327X "Smart" terminal, but ultimately, as far as IBM was concerned, it was still a Mainframe's world, and the PC was ultimately beholden to it.
I rushed out and bought the Alien special edition boxed sets. The first two movies were repackagings of the laserdisc sets, and the last two were featureless movie only editions. Now they are coming out with a new "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set; new special editons for the first two, and real special editions for the other two.
Despite all of the excitement that seems to be surrounding this release, I won't buy it. I'll wait to replace my collection with the HD-DVD version, whenever that comes out. Same goes for the Matrix. How did I just know that they would eventually bundle that "Revisited" disc in with a super-super edition.
Fortunately, they did announce the movie and special edions of FOTR at the same time, so I didn't get burned on that one. From now on, though, any blockbuster that is release in a "Movie-only" or "Limited suppliments" edition, I defanately will not buy, and will hold out for the eventual "deluxe" edition.
I am really annoyed at the Alien set. I was certain that that would be the last time it was visited until HD-DVD. Crap.
I suspect that the argument is that the satellite TV pirates -- presumably the readers of the websites -- will economically profit from this, since they can use this knowledge to avoid paying DirectTV for its services.
I got modded down for saying this last time (and linking to Libertarian "propaganda"), but why does everyone continue to belive that the government can do a better job at space exploration than the private sector? What the hell, I've got karma to burn, so I'll rant.
$40 billion. The space station isn't even done. Humans haven't left Earth's orbit since the '70's. $40 billion. It sickens me.
I suppose the argument goes something like, "Private companies won't fund altruistic space flight, so the gov't has to foot the bill." "Companies are too nearsighted; they wouldn't appreciate the impact of expensive space based R&D."
Well, I could care less about argument #1. If you want a "feel good" space mission, fund it with Space Tourism. I think Lance Bass has some seed money for ya.
As far as agument #2 goes: I read an interesting proposal by Harry Browne (LP candidate for U.S. President in '00): Instead of direcly funding a space agency, the government could hold a "competition". Set aside $X billion, and offer it as a "reward" for the company or companies that meet the stated goal. Hell, this concept should be considered for lots of "expensive" R&D things: Offer a few billion to the first auto company to break our dependancy on oil, for example.
I truly belive that if 50% of that government spending had been set aside as an incentive for the private sector to go to space, we would have seen an appreciable return by now. There has to be people that would love to figure how how to mine asteroids, efficently harness energy from the sun, etc. Instead we can't even launch a Backdoor Boy into space. I mean, aside from the occasional tourist, has there been any appreciable return from that $40 billion yet? Not that I'm, aware of.
So, I'll say it again, and I'll link to it again, and you'll mod me down again: Privatize NASA.
This is an interesing development. However: I wonder how useful this language is on non-windows platforms. Let me explain.
You see, I have just started a new job that is heavily leveraging the
If you haven't written JScript, VBScript, or WSHScript, you have no idea just how amazingly powerful this is. A database connection & query takes around 4 lines of code. I was able to master in-code LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, aka Active Directory on Windoze boxes) queries in less than one day, having never touched an LDAP server in my life prior to that.
.GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc.
Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM. Each programming language still has to be manually extended in some form or another to recognise new APIs -- headers for compiled languages (and remembering to link to the libraries), or worse, "extension agent" coding for dynamic languages like Perl and Python (assuming the API code is a binary shared library). And APIs are almost never identical accross multiple languages.
So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port, because it is heavily dependent on the COM/ActiveX objects to get the real work done. Unless the
Is thes even feasible to do?
PRI is a fairly libertarian group....These think tanks should have to pick names that say something about themselves
Unless they are being directly funded by the Libertarian Party, I don't see the conflict of interest that would require this disclosure. Just because they're mostly Libertarian, they should disclose their political affiation? Judical Watch doesn't disclose the fact that they are a bunch of right-wing Republicans who are interested in prosecuting Liberals, rather than actually monitoring the fairness of the Judical system.
Their position papers whould be read with an eye towards their agenda;
Of course they have an agenda -- that's why they published this paper. Everyone who has something to say has an agenda. I think that their "agenda" speaks for itself in the paper: they wnat to insure that Nanotech resarch isn't outlawed by the paranoid or the religious extremists. I really don't think that this agenda is in the exclusive domain of Libertarians, either. Otherwise, we have quite an uphill battle.
Disclosure: I'm one of those evil card-carrying Libertarians with an agenda to see Nanotech thrive in my lifetime.
Actually, I saw this as a take on the colloquialism "methinks"
They are probably referring to fish farms & hatcheries.