That's right, the product responsible for making Steam commercially possible (Counter-strike) wasn't a Valve creation at all. Without CS, Half-life would go down in history as a great game, but no one would be playing it now, 5 years later.
I see no reason to buy HL2 (any package) now. The unresolved conflict with Sierra could delay online distribution, so while retail buyers can buy HL2 on release, Steam pre-buyers might be sitting around waiting for Valve and Sierra to get their shit sorted out. No thanks. And read the disclaimers - no guaranteed release date! And if HL2 DOES become available through Steam, why not buy it when you're sure you'll be able to play it?
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to do business and live in the world. President Bush is responsible for that? The best thing a president can do to revitalize a sluggish economy is press for tax cuts, and President Bush did that, and it's working (for the moment). Do you think President Gore would have done that? Do you think protectionism would have kept jobs in SF? Get a clue.
For Lie #1, the documents released are probably forgeries. The White House released copies given to them by CBS, i.e. they never had the documents to release to begin with. Since 2/13/2004, the Pentagon has released other documents the White House didn't have. How could Bush have released documents that were forged, or that he didn't even know existed?
For Lie #2, Bush had 60 days to report to another unit. However, before the 60 days were up Bush requested and was granted a discharge from the AFR. So the statement "worked it out with the military" is absolutely correct.
Tech workers cringe because the mere threat that IT workers may unionize sends employers scrambling to move work offshore. If a serous movement started, the jobs would be gone before the first votes are held.
Most high paid IT jobs are salaried or contracted. This leaves the relatively low-paid, little experience IT worker, the $10-$20 an hour guys. How much bargaining power do you think these guys have?
Unions drive up the cost of labor but provide nothing in return to employers. In fact, the threat of strikes makes Unionized labor even less valuable. This would obviously be a serious inducement to outsource IT work. Do we really need to give employers another reason to outsource? The threat of Unionizing would help stregthen the move to outsourcing.
Unions provide some benefits to employees, but at a cost - Union dues and the loss of independence.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
I don't doubt this is true to some extent but whenever I hear this argument for IP I never hear any evidence supporting it. Are there studies? Anecdotes even?
Who needs evidence? You just said you "don't doubt it's true". It's true on the face of it. How many people would go to their jobs if they didn't get paid for it? A few who really love their work might, but most would not. While most people share a love of progress, it's rarely altruistic.
For instance, Intel just announced a sub-80nm lithography process that created a workable device. Would they have invested millions in developing this process if the results could be immediately used by any competitor (who invested NOTHING in the creative process) to create identical devices? Of course not.
I don't think this is all that suprising. Conservatives believe what's good for the corporations is good for everyone.
Conservetives believe one of the legitimate purposes of government is to protect private property. This is good for corporations, small business, individuals, democracy, and freedom in general.
IP isn't property. It never has and never will be. For example, A granted patent isn't valid if there's prior art. How could you apply that principle to say the ownership of a car? I don't think you can. I can smash, steal, set fire to or urinate on a car - I can't do any of these things with a patent! When patent infringement occurs it isn't even stealing in the traditional sense. When someone steal something wealth is transfered atomically. When infringement occurs wealth can be diverted (and that's a dodgy word) away from the patent holder but it's never a transfer from the patent holder directly to the infringer. It's just not correct to call IP property in the traditional sense of the word.
Your argument about IP not being real property is an irrelevant one. So what if IP isn't physical matter? The rights to control IP have intrinsic value. The creation of IP usually requires investment - time, money, material. IP rights exists because governments realize that temporary exclusive rights to IP encourages innovation. In other words, people engage in creative behavior because they want their creation to create something of value for them. It is unlikely people would invest their capital in a creative process if there was no guarantee that their original idea couldn't be used by someone else (someone who made NO investment) for free.
You could conclude that Congress has more impact on unemployment rates than Presidents, and credit Congress with the drop from 8% to 4% (Republican since 1994).
You could credit welfare reform or lower taxes (both Clinton and the Congress).
You could try to remember that Clinton inherited the elder Bush's recession when it had started to recover, so unemployment rates were heading down anyway.
You try being halfway intelligent and blame the rise in unemployment on 9/11, the internet bubble, the rise of competitive powers in China and India, and rising oil prices. None of these events were Bush's fault (or Clinton's).
Michael Moore called a CNN staffer a "Fucking cunt" at the Democratic National Convention. Her crime? She wanted him to return his CNN security credentials after he was finished with an interview. That's the real Michael Moore.
Summary: Bush scored a 1206 on his SAT, which scores to a modern era equivalent of 1280, which puts him in the 88 percentile, or about 10 times as smart as the average Slashdot smartass.
The fact that this Anonymous Coward belch of flamebait gets modded to 5/Interesting should be enough to let everyone know where the mindset of Slashdot is.
IMO the contract isn't valid. It can be nullified by a legal concept known as bilateral mistake. Both sides agreed to something that could never be delivered - a Concept cannot be delivered. It can be written down and tranferred, but that is not a concept, it is proposal, or a specification, or a screenplay, or a blueprint, or just ordinary notes. It can be spoken about at length, but that is not a concept, it's a speech, or a lecture, or a presentation.
If you think it can, I've got a big sack of joy to sell you cheap.
If you think it can, why not go down to the patent office and patent that great idea for a cheap fusion reactor you've got rolling around in your head? The patent office is a disaster, but even they will want something in writing...
The truth is concepts can't be sold. So it's bilateral mistake, case closed. Dipshit judges will be the ruin of us all.
The only case Alcatel might have is non-performance of duties (they could sue for monetary damages), but since Texas is a right-to-work state, that will never fly.
I was reading Tintin at 6 years old, and I recall comprehending it quite well at that age. The stories work as simple adventure, but there's a lot of stuff for adults in there as well. Like the Shrek movies, it appeals to children while offering up cultural references for adults. I also now know some of the storylines involve heroin smuggling, murder, and terrorism (although the English translations I read had been cleaned up). Herge (sorry, US keyboard) is also an excellent illustrator. It's a bit unfair to label Tintin as racist - politically correct intolerance for racism is a recent phenomenom. We're talking about pre-WWII European culture here. Just about everything created by that culture was racist (as it was in most of the world).
This isn't insightful, it gets posted everytime a Patriot Act story is posted here. It's also off-topic.
It's also a juvenile viewpoint (drawing an analogy between the Patriot Act and Fascist tactics). Goering was wrong, in democracies, this tactic may work in the short term, but not for long. Vietnam proved the public won't stand for war in the absence of actual attack. Goering's statement also breaks down for 9/11 - we ACTUALLY WERE attacked (more people killed than at Pearl Harbor, the worst loss of life in hostilities on US soil in one day since the Civil War), and there had been a pattern of escalating violence throught the '90's from Islamic fundamentalists whose stated goal is the destruction of the West and claiming of Western lands for Allah. So I expect the President to do his job (protecting me) and I expect the Legislative and Judicial branches to make sure he doesn't go too far in curtailing liberties.
The President is supposed to lead the country, not be Mr. Nice Guy and try to get along with everyone.
You were correct until the two line screed about Bush at the end. Everyone in the world thought Saddam had WMD's and Bush never made a connection between Iraq and 9/11, only between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which is factual, btw). Any objective observer knows Saddam probably gave money and material to Al Qaeda, if for any reason than to keep them off his back domestically. I doubt if Saddam wanted a bunch of terrorists working against him in Iraq anymore than the Saudis do now. Wise Up! And Bush didn't alienate the world, the rest of the world is still begging at Uncle Sam's teat, same as always.
Unfortunately, there's nothing more mind-numbing than international law, particularly regarding intellectual property rights. A cursory read of the linked articles had me praying for death. Can someone objective sum up the issues and present them here, in colloquial English. Thanks. And dear God please no more acronyms.
Absolutely. This is just a bunch of brown-nosing worthless politicians sucking up for some Microsoft campaign donations. I know equal protection doesn't apply to corporations, but targeting a specific company with legislation sounds awfully unconstitutional to me.
Double fucked is true, but double jeopardy only applies to criminal prosecution. Ask O.J. Simpson - he was found non-guilty in criminal court and subsequently was sued in civil court and found liable.
Ironically, Sami Al-Hussayen came to america to avoid arrest in Egypt for condemning Islamic violence.
You misread the article. Sheikh Ahmed Mansour gave expert testimony at the trial, he is the one who left Egypt to avoid arrest. Al-Hussayen is accused of raising money for terrorist groups (under false pretenses), funneling money to terrorist groups, and recruiting. Here's the real scoop:
Terrorism, free speech collide at Al-Hussayen trial Prosecutors say student aided terrorists by posting cleric's lecture Related stories
Betsy Z. Russell Staff writer
BOISE _ Free speech and terrorism clashed in a Boise courtroom Tuesday as federal prosecutors argued that Sami Al-Hussayen aided terrorists by helping broadcast a controversial Muslim cleric's lecture.
"It is full of violence," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist told the court. "The evidence shows how he deceitfully facilitated the broadcast of this particular lecture, knowing that it was forbidden, sensitive."
Defense attorneys strongly objected. "This is not about recruitmen t and funding," lead defense attorney David Nevin told the court. "This is the government saying, `You may not say these things. You're a terrorist if you express these views, you're a terrorist if you help somebody else express these views."'
Al-Hussayen faces charges of providing material support to terrorists, in part by operating Web sites for various Islamic groups that the government portrays as a recruitment and fund-raising campaign for terrorists. He also faces 11 counts of immigration fraud for the same activities, because he's in the country on a student visa.
Al-Hussayen maintains his innocence, saying he's a peaceful student who merely volunteered for legitimate religious outreach groups.
The lecture, given in Arabic, runs 80 pages in just a partial translation. Titled "The Intifada and the New Tartars," it is Saudi Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali's commentary on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and includes praise for Muslim fighters and anti-American rhetoric.
"Somewhere in that 80 pages is material that will offend everyone," Nevin said. "It's very critical of American foreign policy. It's harshly worded."
However, Nevin said under the First Amendment, he'd have every right to go down to a park today, stand on a soapbox, and give that speech. He likened the prosecution's theory to prosecuting someone who gave him a ride to that park to give the speech.
Lindquist said prosecutors will show that Al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student in computer science, schemed to set up an Internet broadcast of the lecture through a computer server that wouldn't tie it to the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), a group with whom he worked. Prosecutors also plan to present intercepted e-mail chats that show Al-Hussayen declining to give concluding remarks to close the broadcast, and another person then calling him a "coward."
"This evidence shows compellingly and firmly that the defendant did believe in this despicable stuff, he had his hands on this despicable stuff. He had knowledge of it, and he intended it," Lindquist said.
The defense asked U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge not to let the lecture be used as evidence in the case. Nevin said it was being offered not to show any guilt, but "to stir everybody up, to get everybody mad, and to get everybody mad at Mr. Al-Hussayen."
But Lodge declined to block the evidence. Instead, he said it will be allowed, but with certain limitations that he plans to outline to the jury today.
Lodge said he was making no ruling about freedom of speech. "The charges against the defendant do not criminalize speech itself," he said. "The evidence relates to the defendant's knowledge or intent as it relates to providing of material support for terrorists."
The jury will have to decide for itself whether the evidence supports the charge, the judge said. After reviewing the lecture during the trial's
Slashdot Mirror
That's right, the product responsible for making Steam commercially possible (Counter-strike) wasn't a Valve creation at all. Without CS, Half-life would go down in history as a great game, but no one would be playing it now, 5 years later.
I see no reason to buy HL2 (any package) now. The unresolved conflict with Sierra could delay online distribution, so while retail buyers can buy HL2 on release, Steam pre-buyers might be sitting around waiting for Valve and Sierra to get their shit sorted out. No thanks. And read the disclaimers - no guaranteed release date! And if HL2 DOES become available through Steam, why not buy it when you're sure you'll be able to play it?
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to do business and live in the world. President Bush is responsible for that? The best thing a president can do to revitalize a sluggish economy is press for tax cuts, and President Bush did that, and it's working (for the moment). Do you think President Gore would have done that? Do you think protectionism would have kept jobs in SF? Get a clue.
Actually, both lies you state are not lies.
For Lie #1, the documents released are probably forgeries. The White House released copies given to them by CBS, i.e. they never had the documents to release to begin with. Since 2/13/2004, the Pentagon has released other documents the White House didn't have. How could Bush have released documents that were forged, or that he didn't even know existed?
For Lie #2, Bush had 60 days to report to another unit. However, before the 60 days were up Bush requested and was granted a discharge from the AFR. So the statement "worked it out with the military" is absolutely correct.
Tech workers cringe because the mere threat that IT workers may unionize sends employers scrambling to move work offshore. If a serous movement started, the jobs would be gone before the first votes are held.
Most high paid IT jobs are salaried or contracted. This leaves the relatively low-paid, little experience IT worker, the $10-$20 an hour guys. How much bargaining power do you think these guys have?
Unions drive up the cost of labor but provide nothing in return to employers. In fact, the threat of strikes makes Unionized labor even less valuable. This would obviously be a serious inducement to outsource IT work. Do we really need to give employers another reason to outsource? The threat of Unionizing would help stregthen the move to outsourcing.
Unions provide some benefits to employees, but at a cost - Union dues and the loss of independence.
Mod this "hilarious"
I don't doubt this is true to some extent but whenever I hear this argument for IP I never hear any evidence supporting it. Are there studies? Anecdotes even?
Who needs evidence? You just said you "don't doubt it's true". It's true on the face of it. How many people would go to their jobs if they didn't get paid for it? A few who really love their work might, but most would not. While most people share a love of progress, it's rarely altruistic.
For instance, Intel just announced a sub-80nm lithography process that created a workable device. Would they have invested millions in developing this process if the results could be immediately used by any competitor (who invested NOTHING in the creative process) to create identical devices? Of course not.
I don't think this is all that suprising. Conservatives believe what's good for the corporations is good for everyone.
Conservetives believe one of the legitimate purposes of government is to protect private property. This is good for corporations, small business, individuals, democracy, and freedom in general.
IP isn't property. It never has and never will be. For example, A granted patent isn't valid if there's prior art. How could you apply that principle to say the ownership of a car? I don't think you can. I can smash, steal, set fire to or urinate on a car - I can't do any of these things with a patent! When patent infringement occurs it isn't even stealing in the traditional sense. When someone steal something wealth is transfered atomically. When infringement occurs wealth can be diverted (and that's a dodgy word) away from the patent holder but it's never a transfer from the patent holder directly to the infringer. It's just not correct to call IP property in the traditional sense of the word.
Your argument about IP not being real property is an irrelevant one. So what if IP isn't physical matter? The rights to control IP have intrinsic value. The creation of IP usually requires investment - time, money, material. IP rights exists because governments realize that temporary exclusive rights to IP encourages innovation. In other words, people engage in creative behavior because they want their creation to create something of value for them. It is unlikely people would invest their capital in a creative process if there was no guarantee that their original idea couldn't be used by someone else (someone who made NO investment) for free.
You could conclude that Congress has more impact on unemployment rates than Presidents, and credit Congress with the drop from 8% to 4% (Republican since 1994).
You could credit welfare reform or lower taxes (both Clinton and the Congress).
You could try to remember that Clinton inherited the elder Bush's recession when it had started to recover, so unemployment rates were heading down anyway.
You try being halfway intelligent and blame the rise in unemployment on 9/11, the internet bubble, the rise of competitive powers in China and India, and rising oil prices. None of these events were Bush's fault (or Clinton's).
Michael Moore called a CNN staffer a "Fucking cunt" at the Democratic National Convention. Her crime? She wanted him to return his CNN security credentials after he was finished with an interview. That's the real Michael Moore.
Yeah, I hear California is swimming in excess revenue these days. Why, they don't know what to do with all those $$$.
Very funny, but untrue, and Bush's stupidity is a common myth supported by his occasional inability to be coherent.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010622.html
Summary: Bush scored a 1206 on his SAT, which scores to a modern era equivalent of 1280, which puts him in the 88 percentile, or about 10 times as smart as the average Slashdot smartass.
The fact that this Anonymous Coward belch of flamebait gets modded to 5/Interesting should be enough to let everyone know where the mindset of Slashdot is.
...features better popup blocking
How'd they do that? My Mozilla 1.7 blocks 100% of pop-ups. You can't get much better than that.
IMO the contract isn't valid. It can be nullified by a legal concept known as bilateral mistake. Both sides agreed to something that could never be delivered - a Concept cannot be delivered. It can be written down and tranferred, but that is not a concept, it is proposal, or a specification, or a screenplay, or a blueprint, or just ordinary notes. It can be spoken about at length, but that is not a concept, it's a speech, or a lecture, or a presentation.
If you think it can, I've got a big sack of joy to sell you cheap.
If you think it can, why not go down to the patent office and patent that great idea for a cheap fusion reactor you've got rolling around in your head? The patent office is a disaster, but even they will want something in writing...
The truth is concepts can't be sold. So it's bilateral mistake, case closed. Dipshit judges will be the ruin of us all.
The only case Alcatel might have is non-performance of duties (they could sue for monetary damages), but since Texas is a right-to-work state, that will never fly.
For all we know, humans might rank at the cattle level on a galactic scale. You know - really stupid and very, very tasty.
I was reading Tintin at 6 years old, and I recall comprehending it quite well at that age. The stories work as simple adventure, but there's a lot of stuff for adults in there as well. Like the Shrek movies, it appeals to children while offering up cultural references for adults. I also now know some of the storylines involve heroin smuggling, murder, and terrorism (although the English translations I read had been cleaned up). Herge (sorry, US keyboard) is also an excellent illustrator. It's a bit unfair to label Tintin as racist - politically correct intolerance for racism is a recent phenomenom. We're talking about pre-WWII European culture here. Just about everything created by that culture was racist (as it was in most of the world).
This isn't insightful, it gets posted everytime a Patriot Act story is posted here. It's also off-topic.
It's also a juvenile viewpoint (drawing an analogy between the Patriot Act and Fascist tactics).
Goering was wrong, in democracies, this tactic may work in the short term, but not for long. Vietnam proved the public won't stand for war in the absence of actual attack. Goering's statement also breaks down for 9/11 - we ACTUALLY WERE attacked (more people killed than at Pearl Harbor, the worst loss of life in hostilities on US soil in one day since the Civil War), and there had been a pattern of escalating violence throught the '90's from Islamic fundamentalists whose stated goal is the destruction of the West and claiming of Western lands for Allah. So I expect the President to do his job (protecting me) and I expect the Legislative and Judicial branches to make sure he doesn't go too far in curtailing liberties.
The President is supposed to lead the country, not be Mr. Nice Guy and try to get along with everyone.
You were correct until the two line screed about Bush at the end. Everyone in the world thought Saddam had WMD's and Bush never made a connection between Iraq and 9/11, only between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which is factual, btw). Any objective observer knows Saddam probably gave money and material to Al Qaeda, if for any reason than to keep them off his back domestically. I doubt if Saddam wanted a bunch of terrorists working against him in Iraq anymore than the Saudis do now. Wise Up! And Bush didn't alienate the world, the rest of the world is still begging at Uncle Sam's teat, same as always.
Unfortunately, there's nothing more mind-numbing than international law, particularly regarding intellectual property rights. A cursory read of the linked articles had me praying for death. Can someone objective sum up the issues and present them here, in colloquial English. Thanks. And dear God please no more acronyms.
I'm setting the over/under on someone breaking this protection scheme at 200 milliseconds.
Absolutely. This is just a bunch of brown-nosing worthless politicians sucking up for some Microsoft campaign donations. I know equal protection doesn't apply to corporations, but targeting a specific company with legislation sounds awfully unconstitutional to me.
Double fucked is true, but double jeopardy only applies to criminal prosecution. Ask O.J. Simpson - he was found non-guilty in criminal court and subsequently was sued in civil court and found liable.
Ironically, Sami Al-Hussayen came to america to avoid arrest in Egypt for condemning Islamic violence.
You misread the article. Sheikh Ahmed Mansour gave expert testimony at the trial, he is the one who left Egypt to avoid arrest. Al-Hussayen is accused of raising money for terrorist groups (under false pretenses), funneling money to terrorist groups, and recruiting. Here's the real scoop:
Terrorism, free speech collide at Al-Hussayen trial
Prosecutors say student aided terrorists by posting cleric's lecture
Related stories
Betsy Z. Russell
Staff writer
BOISE _ Free speech and terrorism clashed in a Boise courtroom Tuesday as federal prosecutors argued that Sami Al-Hussayen aided terrorists by helping broadcast a controversial Muslim cleric's lecture.
"It is full of violence," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist told the court. "The evidence shows how he deceitfully facilitated the broadcast of this particular lecture, knowing that it was forbidden, sensitive."
Defense attorneys strongly objected. "This is not about recruitmen
t and funding," lead defense attorney David Nevin told the court. "This is the government saying, `You may not say these things. You're a terrorist if you express these views, you're a terrorist if you help somebody else express these views."'
Al-Hussayen faces charges of providing material support to terrorists, in part by operating Web sites for various Islamic groups that the government portrays as a recruitment and fund-raising campaign for terrorists. He also faces 11 counts of immigration fraud for the same activities, because he's in the country on a student visa.
Al-Hussayen maintains his innocence, saying he's a peaceful student who merely volunteered for legitimate religious outreach groups.
The lecture, given in Arabic, runs 80 pages in just a partial translation. Titled "The Intifada and the New Tartars," it is Saudi Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali's commentary on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and includes praise for Muslim fighters and anti-American rhetoric.
"Somewhere in that 80 pages is material that will offend everyone," Nevin said. "It's very critical of American foreign policy. It's harshly worded."
However, Nevin said under the First Amendment, he'd have every right to go down to a park today, stand on a soapbox, and give that speech. He likened the prosecution's theory to prosecuting someone who gave him a ride to that park to give the speech.
Lindquist said prosecutors will show that Al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student in computer science, schemed to set up an Internet broadcast of the lecture through a computer server that wouldn't tie it to the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), a group with whom he worked. Prosecutors also plan to present intercepted e-mail chats that show Al-Hussayen declining to give concluding remarks to close the broadcast, and another person then calling him a "coward."
"This evidence shows compellingly and firmly that the defendant did believe in this despicable stuff, he had his hands on this despicable stuff. He had knowledge of it, and he intended it," Lindquist said.
The defense asked U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge not to let the lecture be used as evidence in the case. Nevin said it was being offered not to show any guilt, but "to stir everybody up, to get everybody mad, and to get everybody mad at Mr. Al-Hussayen."
But Lodge declined to block the evidence. Instead, he said it will be allowed, but with certain limitations that he plans to outline to the jury today.
Lodge said he was making no ruling about freedom of speech. "The charges against the defendant do not criminalize speech itself," he said. "The evidence relates to the defendant's knowledge or intent as it relates to providing of material support for terrorists."
The jury will have to decide for itself whether the evidence supports the charge, the judge said. After reviewing the lecture during the trial's
You're proud? Why? Proud of legitimazing authoritarian rule? Proud of doing nothing to free prisoners of conscience? But you don't mind taking the time to criticize the US treatment of enemy combatants?/ 8222817.htm?1c h p
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0351/hentoff.p