This is way down the list of comments, so it will never get read, but what the hey, I like shoot my mouth off anyway!
Here in Sweden we have one government agency who has fully adapted to the World Wide Web experience. The RSV (Riksskatteverket), the Swedish Tax Service. You can log on to their site and download tax forms and brochures in PDF format. Often you can fill these forms out inside Acrobat Reader and print them. Then it is a simple matter to sign them and send them by snailmail to the RSV (sorry, there is no elecronic signature service yet, but I bet that will be implemented soon too).
You can even go through a fully on-line tax-calculation form, which calculates how much tax you owe. Brilliant (though rather discouraging)!
In fact, a lot of government agencies in Sweden have adapted to the Internet. You can check your student loan at the CSN (Centrala Studiestöds Nämnden), send for applications and so forth.
If nothing else, this shows that these "lines" as is mensioned in the article, can indeed be reduced, and that there really is no reason not to. It takes a lot of work initially, I bet, but saves it for both people in general and the government in the long run.
What's funny to me is that they didn't just write a completely new OS and proceeded just to write an emulator for that OS that emulates old Windows. That way stupid people can run old stupid 16-bit apps in their sparkling new OS and us performance freaks can get our wishes come true too.
Guess it's easy to be smart after the fact, even though I hardly think this is a revolutionary way of thinking. (Is it in essence what NT is doing already? Well, either way, NT is hardly very fast. It's HUGE and pretty stable, but definately not lean or mean).
Hey, if there was an easy way to compensate the artist for those 2 times i listen to their song, I would, but there isn't. I would gladly pay them the $1 for that one song. (By the way, I'm a recording artist myself.) Until the artists get rid of the gigantic monkey riding their backs (the record companies) and start selling their music on-line, I will continue the way I have. By selling on-line I mean directly, with no CD as intermediary, the way one can buy music on www.mp3.com for example.
Yes, of course I would. This is the point, people. This artist isn't loosing any money because if I'd discovered the artist in question in a CD-store I would've listened to the CD and not bought it.
Ehem. Did I actually claim to be completely original? I don't think I did. Not that I have read Huxley, but I can probably point out another several thousand sources of inspiration. This has no bearing on anything at all.
You are right. But what I suggested in my original post was not only doing away with copyright laws, but introducing the exact OPPOSITE of copyright laws, namely copyleft laws. Laws that prohibit anyone from hiding any information from anyone! Granted, this would be a utopia (and therefore an unreachable society), but it would be grand.
In this scheme of things, a software creater has to provide you with the source in order to distribute his software. He would have no rights to prevent you from changing the source and distributing it further and so on...
This sort of thinking is of course horrible for free enterprise, there would be no real profit in doing anything. But then again, silly me believes that there is a benefit in doing interesting work in itself.
The question is, who would write boring manuals and documentation for their products (whatever they may be) when there is no profit in it?
I could argue both points. On one side, I like the idea that all information would be freely interchangable between persons. That everyone has the right to know everything about everything.
The downside to this kind of argumentation is that a lot of people are driven by other motivations than the interests of the common good. A lot of people are more interested in themselves than other people. As it is, these people can now contribute to the common good, by doing important work and getting paid for it. In a society without copyright, what could we give them for their work that they would need if they could not protect the rights to their discoveries? Who would pay for something they have the right to see, read, use?
This is what it comes down to, and it is tricky stuff.
This is very tricky stuff indeed. What I could gather from the article about DMC (Digital Millennium Copyright) was that the movie companies want it to be illegal even to try to circumvent the encryption of digital media.
All the questions that where asked "could a librarian use a few minutes of a DVD" and stuff like that seem quite easy to answer to me. No she cannot. Now in reality, she would, and no one would throw her in jail for it, but its not legal.
Now what it SHOULD be is that once purchased, a piece of software or hardware and whatever technology inside and on it, is owned by the person who bought it. This is the dream of the free software foundation (free not meaning free of charge but as in "information wants to be free"). So whatever I decide to do with my movie, I should be allowed to do. I bought the rights to do that.
This is of course a utopia and not realisable in reality, but we can dream can we not? I feel that the DeCSS movement (which it could almost be described to be these days) is a form of protest us Swedish call "Civil Olydnad", civil disobedience. Meaning to protest against stupid laws by doing what is right even though it is illegal. Lets hope they can afford the consequences.
There are many games in production here surrounding Cyan and the Myst series. Myst III, Exile is being made completely by a different company than Cyan (ie Cyan is not directly involved as far as I understand) Here is a clarification: Future Product Clarification
From this page we learn that Presto Studios is making Exile. Presto is owned by Mattel, which of course will mean that the game will make maps of our phsychological profiles, upload them to Mattel's HQ and subsequently help them in their plans for world domination by producing dolls and action figures incorporating mind control devices.
Now Mudpie, there's a concept I can subscribe to. Hope I have sufficient broadband when it is released to play it. I will never log off...
This is the deal: Religion was invented in the past to establish a set of rules to allow people to coexist in some kind of semplance of civilization. God was introduced (sometimes gods) to explain the unexplainable and to introduce to a force higher than man to punish those that do not adhere to the religious beliefs. The upshot of this is that through time there has always been people seeking fame, fortune and power through religion (priests, kings (the faraohs said they where gods) and so on) and other people still who thought that the religion itself was the important part.
To prove my point I will make some examples: In religions based in Persia (Iraq, Israel, the middle east) it is very important that a person gets buried in a hurry when he dies. This is of course of practical reasons, because in the warm climate a body will deteriorate and fester with bacteria quickly, which means you need to get it into the ground fast.
These religions also dictate that eating pig-meat is forbidden. They say it is because the pig is a "filthy" animal. In fact, it is because the meat tends to become spoilt very quickly in the warm climate wich makes storing it a big problem.
To make people follow the rules and to explain the unexplainable (of course they didn't know about bacteria in those days) they just decreed that these things where said to be so "by God".
Throught time we have also had a lot of "prophets" who have come to the people with the "word of God". Most of these people originated in times of need, when people where being prosecuted by another religion or ethnic group. Often their teachings make huge sense and really set up a reasonable ethic base for life. "Thou shalt not kill" for example. Jesus and Mohammed are among my favourites because their general message was tolerance and moderation and the end result was intolerance and extremism.
I am, as you might have guessed, an atheist. I was an agnostic before I started studying physics. The math and theories behind the physics I've studied through the years is advanced enough that I can conclude quite decisively that God does not exist. It is also quite reasonable if you take a look at society where notions of "God" comes from. Just the simple fact that there are a multitude of different religions should be a pointer to any reasonable person. Why is YOUR God the right one?
Good ethics are in my opinion the basis of civilisation. Religion is just one way of enforcing good ethings (a way that has a lot of undesirable sideffects). Today we have a strong social structure in most countries to take care of people with bad ethics (criminals) which renders scare tactics such as "you're going to hell!" unneccesary.
In short (for all you who could not read all of this): Religion has been and will always be just a vehicle for ethics. I as an atheist have strong ethics without religion, which renders it (religion) unneccesary. As for explaining the universe or the world around us, I think that is best to discover on your own. Don't accept anyone's story about this! Go make your own inquiries!
The woodpeckers beak sits on bone that is very springy. The vibrations from the hacking at the tree does not propagate into the woodpecker's head. That is why he doesn't bash his brain out. It has been explained.
This is my opinion also. I'm a sci-fi buff (as you might surmise from my nick) and I've read some of the most brilliant science fiction authors of our time; the kind who live on the cutting edge of science and who have fresh ideas and a new take on current technology. Greg Egan is one of my favourites (look him up on the internet, he has a homepage he writes himself).
In some of his books (and also in the works of Stephen Baxter) he deals with this issue.
My view is that we can't really bet on life evolving anywhere else. Until we have proof we have to consider the chance that we are indeed alone. I think it is our responsibility to see to it that life continues even if something happens to us. Just sending out rockets with bacteria inside into the depths of space would be a start. Then when we have the technology, perhaps to send humans or human genes into space as well. We can't assume that space is full of life.
To this end, populating Mars would also increase the likelyhood of the continuation of life. If we can terraform it, we should. If nothing else then just because it is the first step before going deeper into space.
There are already this kind of device. It is called plants...
Haven't seen anyone planting a lot of begonias in a room and waiting for the place to blow up. A lot of greenhouses would have exploded this way. Most likely the device produces enough oxygen to breathe. That's like 20% of the atmosphere and well below any dangerous levels.
If you want to make oxygen just take a tub of water and stick unshielded wires and run a few thousand volts through there. Electrolysis will make oxygen for you. Making oxygen on earth is no problem. The trick is to do it in space (or on other planets) with what you have there.
Regardless of popular belief there is no abolute vacuum anywhere, not even in space. There IS friction in space. But though "spinning for 4000 years" sounds incredible, it's really hard to make anything of it since we don't know the air pressure inside the gyroscope or the electromagnetic fields that encompass it (though they said those where really miniscule).
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Sweden we have one government agency who has fully adapted to the World Wide Web experience. The RSV (Riksskatteverket), the Swedish Tax Service. You can log on to their site and download tax forms and brochures in PDF format. Often you can fill these forms out inside Acrobat Reader and print them. Then it is a simple matter to sign them and send them by snailmail to the RSV (sorry, there is no elecronic signature service yet, but I bet that will be implemented soon too).
You can even go through a fully on-line tax-calculation form, which calculates how much tax you owe. Brilliant (though rather discouraging)!
In fact, a lot of government agencies in Sweden have adapted to the Internet. You can check your student loan at the CSN (Centrala Studiestöds Nämnden), send for applications and so forth.
If nothing else, this shows that these "lines" as is mensioned in the article, can indeed be reduced, and that there really is no reason not to. It takes a lot of work initially, I bet, but saves it for both people in general and the government in the long run.
Guess it's easy to be smart after the fact, even though I hardly think this is a revolutionary way of thinking. (Is it in essence what NT is doing already? Well, either way, NT is hardly very fast. It's HUGE and pretty stable, but definately not lean or mean).
Hey, if there was an easy way to compensate the artist for those 2 times i listen to their song, I would, but there isn't. I would gladly pay them the $1 for that one song. (By the way, I'm a recording artist myself.) Until the artists get rid of the gigantic monkey riding their backs (the record companies) and start selling their music on-line, I will continue the way I have. By selling on-line I mean directly, with no CD as intermediary, the way one can buy music on www.mp3.com for example.
How do you pronounce that abbrevation: SPRMs?
Ehem. Did I actually claim to be completely original? I don't think I did. Not that I have read Huxley, but I can probably point out another several thousand sources of inspiration. This has no bearing on anything at all.
In this scheme of things, a software creater has to provide you with the source in order to distribute his software. He would have no rights to prevent you from changing the source and distributing it further and so on...
This sort of thinking is of course horrible for free enterprise, there would be no real profit in doing anything. But then again, silly me believes that there is a benefit in doing interesting work in itself.
The question is, who would write boring manuals and documentation for their products (whatever they may be) when there is no profit in it?
The downside to this kind of argumentation is that a lot of people are driven by other motivations than the interests of the common good. A lot of people are more interested in themselves than other people. As it is, these people can now contribute to the common good, by doing important work and getting paid for it. In a society without copyright, what could we give them for their work that they would need if they could not protect the rights to their discoveries? Who would pay for something they have the right to see, read, use?
This is what it comes down to, and it is tricky stuff.
One possible reason for the PRE tag not being available is that then people could make a 100 page long empty post.
All the questions that where asked "could a librarian use a few minutes of a DVD" and stuff like that seem quite easy to answer to me. No she cannot. Now in reality, she would, and no one would throw her in jail for it, but its not legal.
Now what it SHOULD be is that once purchased, a piece of software or hardware and whatever technology inside and on it, is owned by the person who bought it. This is the dream of the free software foundation (free not meaning free of charge but as in "information wants to be free"). So whatever I decide to do with my movie, I should be allowed to do. I bought the rights to do that.
This is of course a utopia and not realisable in reality, but we can dream can we not? I feel that the DeCSS movement (which it could almost be described to be these days) is a form of protest us Swedish call "Civil Olydnad", civil disobedience. Meaning to protest against stupid laws by doing what is right even though it is illegal. Lets hope they can afford the consequences.
From this page we learn that Presto Studios is making Exile. Presto is owned by Mattel, which of course will mean that the game will make maps of our phsychological profiles, upload them to Mattel's HQ and subsequently help them in their plans for world domination by producing dolls and action figures incorporating mind control devices.
Now Mudpie, there's a concept I can subscribe to. Hope I have sufficient broadband when it is released to play it. I will never log off...
To prove my point I will make some examples: In religions based in Persia (Iraq, Israel, the middle east) it is very important that a person gets buried in a hurry when he dies. This is of course of practical reasons, because in the warm climate a body will deteriorate and fester with bacteria quickly, which means you need to get it into the ground fast.
These religions also dictate that eating pig-meat is forbidden. They say it is because the pig is a "filthy" animal. In fact, it is because the meat tends to become spoilt very quickly in the warm climate wich makes storing it a big problem.
To make people follow the rules and to explain the unexplainable (of course they didn't know about bacteria in those days) they just decreed that these things where said to be so "by God".
Throught time we have also had a lot of "prophets" who have come to the people with the "word of God". Most of these people originated in times of need, when people where being prosecuted by another religion or ethnic group. Often their teachings make huge sense and really set up a reasonable ethic base for life. "Thou shalt not kill" for example. Jesus and Mohammed are among my favourites because their general message was tolerance and moderation and the end result was intolerance and extremism.
I am, as you might have guessed, an atheist. I was an agnostic before I started studying physics. The math and theories behind the physics I've studied through the years is advanced enough that I can conclude quite decisively that God does not exist. It is also quite reasonable if you take a look at society where notions of "God" comes from. Just the simple fact that there are a multitude of different religions should be a pointer to any reasonable person. Why is YOUR God the right one?
Good ethics are in my opinion the basis of civilisation. Religion is just one way of enforcing good ethings (a way that has a lot of undesirable sideffects). Today we have a strong social structure in most countries to take care of people with bad ethics (criminals) which renders scare tactics such as "you're going to hell!" unneccesary.
In short (for all you who could not read all of this): Religion has been and will always be just a vehicle for ethics. I as an atheist have strong ethics without religion, which renders it (religion) unneccesary. As for explaining the universe or the world around us, I think that is best to discover on your own. Don't accept anyone's story about this! Go make your own inquiries!
In some of his books (and also in the works of Stephen Baxter) he deals with this issue.
My view is that we can't really bet on life evolving anywhere else. Until we have proof we have to consider the chance that we are indeed alone. I think it is our responsibility to see to it that life continues even if something happens to us. Just sending out rockets with bacteria inside into the depths of space would be a start. Then when we have the technology, perhaps to send humans or human genes into space as well. We can't assume that space is full of life.
To this end, populating Mars would also increase the likelyhood of the continuation of life. If we can terraform it, we should. If nothing else then just because it is the first step before going deeper into space.
Haven't seen anyone planting a lot of begonias in a room and waiting for the place to blow up. A lot of greenhouses would have exploded this way. Most likely the device produces enough oxygen to breathe. That's like 20% of the atmosphere and well below any dangerous levels.
If you want to make oxygen just take a tub of water and stick unshielded wires and run a few thousand volts through there. Electrolysis will make oxygen for you. Making oxygen on earth is no problem. The trick is to do it in space (or on other planets) with what you have there.
Regardless of popular belief there is no abolute vacuum anywhere, not even in space. There IS friction in space. But though "spinning for 4000 years" sounds incredible, it's really hard to make anything of it since we don't know the air pressure inside the gyroscope or the electromagnetic fields that encompass it (though they said those where really miniscule).