Well, looking at/usr/portage/apps-games, it would appear there are some other choices. And there are lots of fun free software games out there. One that I'd like to see included as "stable" is Defendguin. That game is hilarious.
What I don't get is why spend time/money on games like America's Army. Is the game free software? And why such blatant propaganda for militarism?
Flamebait: I wonder what Joe Lieberman thinks about the US Army being involved in creating violent video games. Of course, far be it from a Democrat to actually take a stand on something.:)
Can you point me to one of these cross-platform, high-level languages, please?
Re:I knew I should have patented that!
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Are you kidding? Driving is a god-given right! And it's entrapment. If he knew the cop was there he wouldn't have been speeding. Him thinking he was being ignored by law enforcement is practically like them pressing his accerelator for him! He was set up, plain and simple. He's just lucky he wasn't listening to mp3s at the time, can you imagine what a ticket for going 345 MPH would do to his insurance rates?
Re:Einstein would be impressed.
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· Score: 2, Insightful
No need to mod down the original, it was actually kind of funny.:)
Why not keep more on the spool? Probably they will decide at some point to do so if five minutes or three minutes or whatever is deemed insufficient. But you don't really want to run your disk at always-maxed-out, I don't think. Especially since the amount of space available for spooling would grow smaller as you recorded. That's just a whole set of bugs waiting to find their way into code. Your code would have to account for the changing spool size during a shift. It would also make it harder to determine how much space is left on the device... and in fact, if you pressed record and it saved all three hours, how would you record the rest of the incident?
RH9 has it. Gentoo's had it for quite some time. SUSE has it. Debian will, of course, have it officially in about three years, but they have it unofficially now (in fact, they have a prerelease of 3.3 in testing). I suspect it is the feature, not the compiler which is rarely used.
There are no patent issues mentioned in the initial filing against IBM. Most of their claims center on matters relating to trade secrets. As you probably know, you don't need trade secret status to protect your copyright. Therefore, the purported damage is twofold: IBM (and perhaps others) violate their non-disclosure agreements by incorporating trade secrets into Linux (or submitting them to be incorporated), and in so doing they simply took the easiest method for doing this, i.e. copying the source code directly, perhaps changing some specifics in order to ensure that a simple diff couldn't catch the copying.
I am not saying that IBM is guilty of either, but I am saying that that is what IBM is accused of. Patents are not part of the issue. The problem for the trade secrets is that they are no longer secrets. As secrets they would not be eligible for patent protection, so methods of doing X, Y, or Z that were intended to be secret no longer are. Unfortunately this makes it hard to put the genie back in the bottle on those ideas.
A separate question is the code itself, not the ideas/methods instantiated in the code. If the algorithms were patented, no amount of clean-room coding could get around that (which is part of why math/software patents are so insidious). However, with the trade secret tact, once the methods are known, all that is required is a clean-room implementation. This sort of reverse engineering is accepted, no?
The problem for SCO here is that they foolishly decided to attempt to keep their algorithms secret forever by opting for trade secret status rather than patenting those ideas. They might still hold the person(s) who violated their NDAs liable, but the rest of us don't have an agreement with SCO, so those pieces of the kernel that violate copyright by having been simply cut & pasted in can be removed pending reimplementations that are not derived works.
In fact, most of SCO's trouble with public opinion in this case derives from their hopes of keeping all of this stuff secret. If they were simply relying on copyright or patent law, they could, as others have pointed out, just send out cease and desist orders and would have asked for preliminary injunctions on distrubition of infringing code. After all, making copyrighted code available to the public, as you point out, does not invalidate one's copyright. In fact, having that code as part of a court record would provide evidence that SCO itself hadn't incorporated the code from Linux.
And looking at it, I don't see how they're going to prove that they wrote certain pieces of code first to begin with. My question is: is code coming from the FSF that is going to be at risk here? Or is the main concern just Linux kernel code, and if so, what alternatives do the rest of us have? Can we just swap out the Linux kernel for a BSD? Or even the HURD, assuming it becomes reasonably complete and usable at some point?
I don't think what I'm arguing is not a "very thin line". What you're arguing is. When you start to think that things like ideas are the same as property, then you start down a very worrisome path. Just when does the right to an idea end? In 14 years? In 17 years? In 20 years? At the end of the originator of the idea's lifetime? At the end of the originator's lifetime plus 70 years? Never? To me that's the crux of the problem here.
It's not that I'd like to equate invention and creation with copying, although at a basic level the physical act is the same-- obviously the intent of the original was different than the intent of the copy. However, I also consider that every creation draws heavily on other creations in some way. Music is usually quite derivative, or follows a form. Ditto, the mystery, the romance, the tragedy, the limerick, the haiku, the portrait, the sunset snapshot, etc etc. Most mechanical inventions draw upon shared knowledge. Most anything requires a base on which to build.
There are some big ticket items out there that take a lot of resources to develop, I'll go along with that. Movies are a great example of this. But even if I imitate another movie, I've got to do quite a bit of creative work myself. However, if I simply duplicate the media containing an existing movie, that takes almost no effort on my part. Of course, it takes almost no effort on the part of the movie maker either. Their problem is that they spent a lot making the original. Our problem is how to encourage them to make that investment and take those risks.
I question whether the regime of copyright is the proper solution to the problem. That's all. I don't disagree that it's fair to pay people both for the incremental expense of their product as well as the enormous creative and financial capital they've invested in the original. What I worry about is that we're treating ideas like property, something to hoard... and the discussion isn't one that leaves a lot of room for derivative works, remakes, cover songs, and such down the line. Disney makes a bundle retelling public domain stories in novel ways. Will any of the rest of us ever be able to retell a Disney story in our own way?
So it should be illegal for Microsoft to lower its price to $0 to match the similar price tag on the GNU/Linux operating system? AT&T's monopoly was, at least, the result of a governmental interference in the market in the first place. And Standard Oil had an end-to-end monopoly, much different than Microsoft, which doesn't make computer components (except mice and keyboards), whole systems, or own any retail outlets. Microsoft's operating system does not prevent non-MS software from running (indeed MS Outlook seems all too willing to run software on behalf of users).
Quit blaming Microsoft. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you or your business from using any number of different versions of GNU/Linux, BSD, other Unix OS's, or Macintosh. Apparently the overwhelming number of users have made their choice. Instead of focusing on Microsoft's supposedly shady behavior, let's focus on why their software is a waste of time and money and make sure our alternatives make sense, both functionally and idealogically.
Any one of us could easily start a firm to custom build and sell Linux machines, our barriers to entry would not that high. Buying off-the-shelf components and building some stock installs is not a painful or difficult practice. The question is: could you convince Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's to carry the machines the way Wal-Mart is carrying Lindows machines online?
Prior to Europeans coming to the US, Indians did not have the concept of "land ownership". Everyone could use the land.
This is an obvious falsehood. First, the assertion that all of the several hundred Indian nations that existed in North (and South!) America before the advent of the Europeans shared the same world view is overly simplistic. Second, I suspect there were any number of territory disputes prior to the advent of Europeans between various Indian nations. Third, even within single nations, Indians most certainly did not have a "do as you please" mentality, rather they seem to have generally had a stronger social orientation than Europeans-- meaning, the group decided how to use the land it held in common.
Party A creates something. Party B wants to use it for free, in essence "profiting" from the work of Party A
Another obvious falsehood. Party B is quite willing to put his own resources into creating a copy of something-- or to pay someone else to create that copy. Party A's something remains intact and in Party A's possession. Party A can still use it. Party B now has something just like Party B's something. Party A does not have a natural right to profit, certainly not off B's hard work in creating a duplicate something.
There is no need for the government to split up the frequency bands and award sole rights to those bands to small groups. They could opt for a licensing scheme that instead regulated the type of equipment used to broadcast using spread spectrum technology.
1) Prior art does not automatically invalidate a patent. Most patents include references to previous patents that contain ideas of which the current patent constitutes a refinement or development.
2) In this case, using a "popularity" measurement to auto-complete would be different enough from all of the examples you listed to be a "new" idea.
3) None of the above should be construed as approval for a patent granted for this "invention". Patents should cover actual devices and inventions, not ways to use computers or ways of doing business.
(disclaimer: I am not a member of any organized religious community, Buddhist or Christian, as such I do not represent an "official" view of either herein)
Buddhism is not a single entity about which generalizations are easily made, but self-sacrifice is most certainly not uncommon in Buddhism. There is even a type of buddha, the bodhisattva, who actually devotes this life (and perhaps all subsequent lives) to the practice of compassion.
Another way to look at the "sacrifice" motif in Judaism and Christianity is to see how sacrifice functions in that theology-- which is to say: it appears to be an appeasement of an angry God, not a modus operandi for practictioners. The most prominent OT example would be Abraham's near-miss with Isaac. In the end Christ becomes this same sort of blood sacrifice, according to the main interpretations of this traditions. In fact, he's the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It is at that time that the concept of a living sacrifice is introduced.
So, in Buddhism, you find none of the sense of sacrifice arising because there is no angry god to appease. However, you find plenty of emphasis on compassion. In fact some Buddhists, like the Dalai Lama, consider compassion a central feature of Buddhism.
Of course, Buddhism doesn't have quite the same dramatic flair as the good versus evil theme found in Judaism/Christianity, so you probably don't want to limit yourself to Buddhist thought when making an action film.:)
For my part, I consider the Matrix to have too many deficiencies in the plot/intellect department to be very philosophical. Great action film though. Awesome effects. And just resonant on enough levels to make you think... even if the movie itself isn't much of a resource, it might get you looking for resources that are more suitable.
Considering the error would have caused it to come up $80 short, perhaps the cashier should not be trying to compensate by only putting in a $10 from his own pocket (or short-changing a later customer).:)
Your post is a total non-sequitor to mine. I discussed the impacts of a zero growth policy for the public domain and the expanding definition of infringement. You seem to think I said "piracy" was some sort of protest. Nor did I mention gouging (never mind that several record companies were found guilty of illegal price-fixing). And you talk about "theft", when it's clear that the discussion is about copyright infringement, not shoplifting.
Yes, you forgot to somehow work in an intelligent discussion of Fair Use. Most of the copyright activity you're seeing isn't intended to clamp down on "piracy" (which really could be considered "free advertising" in many cases), it's intended to restrict Fair Use. One of the primary activities outlawed by the DMCA is, in fact, Fair Use. Many of the DRM schemes being floated will obliterate what's left of the right of first sale (which doctrine actually enshrines the right of a buyer to resell a good).
Some things you could have mentioned if you weren't simply trying to be glib would have been the lawsuit filed against the publishers of "The Wind Done Gone", a work which was for a time prevented from dissemination due to concerns over "copyright infringement". Apparently it was not "fair" enough to write a literary criticism that worked well as a reworking of the original novel using the technique of parody.
You might also have mentioned the growing terms available to copyright holders. The public domain has effectively been squelched. If the pattern of lengthening the "limited term" of copyright and applying that lengthened term retroactively is not stopped, we will never get another new work in the public domain. After a while this means that our shared cultural background will be solely owned by corporate interests. If the original terms of copyright were still in effect, we could be enjoying a renaissance of remakes of older films and stories from the last century.
As it is, it's barely possible to make a film in which another copyrighted work appears, let alone actually retell the story from some other work. Shakespeare's plays are redone all the time, some with only the barest resemblance to the original... but no one argues that the makers of those works are simply plagiarists and pirates. In fact, often those redoing Shakespeare's plays belong to the same industry pushing for expansions on its ability to prevent others from doing anything similar with their own works.
Is copyright promoting innovations and cultural discourse, or preventing it? Is "piracy" really harming the industry? You forgot to ask those questions. I suggest you look at the revenue numbers coming out of Hollywood and then ask yourself whether online trading is hurting the movies. Look at the RIAA's numbers for revenues. Sure they claim losses due to "piracy", but those are made up numbers. Yes, their revenues and sales are down. But so is tourism and a lot of other consumer activity. Additionally the RIAA's been releasing less new stuff to buy.
So it would seem that you forgot to back up your assertion that copyright infringment is really the reason these lobbies are working so hard of late. In fact, it sounds to me like they're much less concerned with existing infringments than they are with expanding the definition of infringment.
I don't see why a separate search would be useful. Perhaps if they had a keywords function that would apply to certain things, this would improve the ability to write a search in the first place. Something similar to the site tag where you coud then do search "foo bar keyword: -blog" to get results for foo bars that were not tagged as being in blogs. Conversely you could search +blog to only get blogs. Perhaps this could tie in with their directory-based listings as well.
You mean there's articles we're supposed to read? If we did that, how we would ever get in on the discussion while it was still "live"?
If you ask me, RAM is still too expensive to make this feasible. The article seems to assume that the examples listed are typical. But for so many purposes the idea of keeping the whole database in memory is a huge waste unless RAM gets a lot cheaper. For $100 you can get 120GB of HD or 256MB of RAM. That's not a comparable expense. And depending on the database, you are not likely to need the whole thing in RAM most of the time. In fact, how ofen is speed going to be important enough to justify this?
If you have a system where speed is of the essence and the size is not prohibitive, can't existing DB engines be tuned to cache as much as possible if not all of the data in RAM already?
I think if you look over the 1500+ posts I've made to Slashdot in the last few years, you'll see that I am hardly Jon Katz. In fact, I've responded to others with "Jon Katz, is that you?" on probably more than one occasion. So your reply is neither accurate nor novel. But thanks for playing.:)
Sometimes makes you wonder if the large number of "2% smartest" people are related to the large number of people who think they are in the "top 5% wealthiest" category.:)
That said, our society doesn't generally deal well with extreme intelligence. As soon as it is realized that you score well on standardized tests (which is what these measures actually measure, not "intelligence"), there is extraordinary pressure not to "waste" that intelligence. It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course. This is probably a mistake.
Most schools are not designed to nurture independent learning (or thought, really). The medium is a large part of the message and that message is, "obey arbitrary authority, move around at the sound of the bell, you are smart enough to learn the world's history, physics, and advanced match, but you are not smart enough to manage your own time or decide who should teach you what."
Is it any wonder, then, that some of the nation's brightest stars get bored or upset or choose fairly antisocial ways of expressing themselves? The worst case is when those "smart" kids come from otherwise average families. Those parents may act like they've hit the lottery, or simply continue to apply pressure (apparently even subtle sticks are more common than any kind of carrot in these situations) to urge the kid to "use their full potential" or whatever. It's a bit like a gardener who would try to grow his plants faster by sitting in the garden and pulling on the tops of the plants.
"Paper or plastic" is a false dichotomy. The best shopping bags are made of cloth. Natural fiber cloth bags can last a very long time-- obviating the need for single or limited use bags. And waste reduction (through reuse) is far more important than any level of recyclability. Natural fiber cloth bags can also theoretically be recycled into paper.
I think you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a prison psychologist or preacher that to counsel inmates properly, she'd have definately needed to do hard time, because hey, how else could she relate?
Considering the U.S.' abnormally high incarceration rate, it might do us all some good to spend some time "inside" so we can better understand how that system functions. Law and order propenents have become increasingly strident in the last couple of years. So maybe it is a good idea for us all to learn to relate better to this approach.
As to computer security, the point you are looking for appears more to me to be one of: you don't have to forego ethics to learn to do nasty stuff. Practicing martial arts or firearms usage doesn't imply that one will become a serial killer... the real question is one of reform. Can a black hat reform? Yes. In some cases. In others, no. It depends on the circumstances. We have to look at both the nature and scope of the original criminal activity, the life circumstances of the hacker, and subsequent behavior. If someone cracked a few sytems at age 15, but then spent all the time from 18 to 35 as a responsible computer technician, I'd trust them more than I'd trust even that same someone at age 20.
That said, Chobits is one of my favorite anime series. And I know almost everyone hated "Bicentennial Man", but I thought it was great, too (although not exactly Asimovian, if there is such a thing). The smarter computers get, expect more movies like "The Matrix" until our relationship to the machines settles down a bit.
And some other interesting reads on the mix of computer networks and humans would be: "Sisters of Glass", "Primary Inversion" (series), and... well, it's getting to be downright ubiquitous.
Anyone know if there's a good place to buy parts (like mannequins) that could be used to build humanoid looking computers? You've still got to do something intelligent with the monitor. Having a big old CRT just plunked down next to an off-the-wall case destroys the whole effect.
You're right, of course. So why should Mr. Perens continue to worry about "open source" rather than "free software"? This article talks at length, not about Free Software, but Open Source. And if there is no real difference between the two, why persist in using the more recent term "open source" at all?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, looking at /usr/portage/apps-games, it would appear there are some other choices. And there are lots of fun free software games out there. One that I'd like to see included as "stable" is Defendguin. That game is hilarious.
:)
What I don't get is why spend time/money on games like America's Army. Is the game free software? And why such blatant propaganda for militarism?
Flamebait: I wonder what Joe Lieberman thinks about the US Army being involved in creating violent video games. Of course, far be it from a Democrat to actually take a stand on something.
Can you point me to one of these cross-platform, high-level languages, please?
Are you kidding? Driving is a god-given right! And it's entrapment. If he knew the cop was there he wouldn't have been speeding. Him thinking he was being ignored by law enforcement is practically like them pressing his accerelator for him! He was set up, plain and simple. He's just lucky he wasn't listening to mp3s at the time, can you imagine what a ticket for going 345 MPH would do to his insurance rates?
No need to mod down the original, it was actually kind of funny. :)
Why not keep more on the spool? Probably they will decide at some point to do so if five minutes or three minutes or whatever is deemed insufficient. But you don't really want to run your disk at always-maxed-out, I don't think. Especially since the amount of space available for spooling would grow smaller as you recorded. That's just a whole set of bugs waiting to find their way into code. Your code would have to account for the changing spool size during a shift. It would also make it harder to determine how much space is left on the device... and in fact, if you pressed record and it saved all three hours, how would you record the rest of the incident?
RH9 has it. Gentoo's had it for quite some time. SUSE has it. Debian will, of course, have it officially in about three years, but they have it unofficially now (in fact, they have a prerelease of 3.3 in testing). I suspect it is the feature, not the compiler which is rarely used.
There are no patent issues mentioned in the initial filing against IBM. Most of their claims center on matters relating to trade secrets. As you probably know, you don't need trade secret status to protect your copyright. Therefore, the purported damage is twofold: IBM (and perhaps others) violate their non-disclosure agreements by incorporating trade secrets into Linux (or submitting them to be incorporated), and in so doing they simply took the easiest method for doing this, i.e. copying the source code directly, perhaps changing some specifics in order to ensure that a simple diff couldn't catch the copying.
I am not saying that IBM is guilty of either, but I am saying that that is what IBM is accused of. Patents are not part of the issue. The problem for the trade secrets is that they are no longer secrets. As secrets they would not be eligible for patent protection, so methods of doing X, Y, or Z that were intended to be secret no longer are. Unfortunately this makes it hard to put the genie back in the bottle on those ideas.
A separate question is the code itself, not the ideas/methods instantiated in the code. If the algorithms were patented, no amount of clean-room coding could get around that (which is part of why math/software patents are so insidious). However, with the trade secret tact, once the methods are known, all that is required is a clean-room implementation. This sort of reverse engineering is accepted, no?
The problem for SCO here is that they foolishly decided to attempt to keep their algorithms secret forever by opting for trade secret status rather than patenting those ideas. They might still hold the person(s) who violated their NDAs liable, but the rest of us don't have an agreement with SCO, so those pieces of the kernel that violate copyright by having been simply cut & pasted in can be removed pending reimplementations that are not derived works.
In fact, most of SCO's trouble with public opinion in this case derives from their hopes of keeping all of this stuff secret. If they were simply relying on copyright or patent law, they could, as others have pointed out, just send out cease and desist orders and would have asked for preliminary injunctions on distrubition of infringing code. After all, making copyrighted code available to the public, as you point out, does not invalidate one's copyright. In fact, having that code as part of a court record would provide evidence that SCO itself hadn't incorporated the code from Linux.
And looking at it, I don't see how they're going to prove that they wrote certain pieces of code first to begin with. My question is: is code coming from the FSF that is going to be at risk here? Or is the main concern just Linux kernel code, and if so, what alternatives do the rest of us have? Can we just swap out the Linux kernel for a BSD? Or even the HURD, assuming it becomes reasonably complete and usable at some point?
But what happens when the grapes wake up to the reality that they're basically slaves, serving as batteries for human kind?
I don't think what I'm arguing is not a "very thin line". What you're arguing is. When you start to think that things like ideas are the same as property, then you start down a very worrisome path. Just when does the right to an idea end? In 14 years? In 17 years? In 20 years? At the end of the originator of the idea's lifetime? At the end of the originator's lifetime plus 70 years? Never? To me that's the crux of the problem here.
It's not that I'd like to equate invention and creation with copying, although at a basic level the physical act is the same-- obviously the intent of the original was different than the intent of the copy. However, I also consider that every creation draws heavily on other creations in some way. Music is usually quite derivative, or follows a form. Ditto, the mystery, the romance, the tragedy, the limerick, the haiku, the portrait, the sunset snapshot, etc etc. Most mechanical inventions draw upon shared knowledge. Most anything requires a base on which to build.
There are some big ticket items out there that take a lot of resources to develop, I'll go along with that. Movies are a great example of this. But even if I imitate another movie, I've got to do quite a bit of creative work myself. However, if I simply duplicate the media containing an existing movie, that takes almost no effort on my part. Of course, it takes almost no effort on the part of the movie maker either. Their problem is that they spent a lot making the original. Our problem is how to encourage them to make that investment and take those risks.
I question whether the regime of copyright is the proper solution to the problem. That's all. I don't disagree that it's fair to pay people both for the incremental expense of their product as well as the enormous creative and financial capital they've invested in the original. What I worry about is that we're treating ideas like property, something to hoard... and the discussion isn't one that leaves a lot of room for derivative works, remakes, cover songs, and such down the line. Disney makes a bundle retelling public domain stories in novel ways. Will any of the rest of us ever be able to retell a Disney story in our own way?
So it should be illegal for Microsoft to lower its price to $0 to match the similar price tag on the GNU/Linux operating system? AT&T's monopoly was, at least, the result of a governmental interference in the market in the first place. And Standard Oil had an end-to-end monopoly, much different than Microsoft, which doesn't make computer components (except mice and keyboards), whole systems, or own any retail outlets. Microsoft's operating system does not prevent non-MS software from running (indeed MS Outlook seems all too willing to run software on behalf of users).
Quit blaming Microsoft. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you or your business from using any number of different versions of GNU/Linux, BSD, other Unix OS's, or Macintosh. Apparently the overwhelming number of users have made their choice. Instead of focusing on Microsoft's supposedly shady behavior, let's focus on why their software is a waste of time and money and make sure our alternatives make sense, both functionally and idealogically.
Any one of us could easily start a firm to custom build and sell Linux machines, our barriers to entry would not that high. Buying off-the-shelf components and building some stock installs is not a painful or difficult practice. The question is: could you convince Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's to carry the machines the way Wal-Mart is carrying Lindows machines online?
Prior to Europeans coming to the US, Indians did not have the concept of "land ownership". Everyone could use the land.
This is an obvious falsehood. First, the assertion that all of the several hundred Indian nations that existed in North (and South!) America before the advent of the Europeans shared the same world view is overly simplistic. Second, I suspect there were any number of territory disputes prior to the advent of Europeans between various Indian nations. Third, even within single nations, Indians most certainly did not have a "do as you please" mentality, rather they seem to have generally had a stronger social orientation than Europeans-- meaning, the group decided how to use the land it held in common.
Party A creates something. Party B wants to use it for free, in essence "profiting" from the work of Party A
Another obvious falsehood. Party B is quite willing to put his own resources into creating a copy of something-- or to pay someone else to create that copy. Party A's something remains intact and in Party A's possession. Party A can still use it. Party B now has something just like Party B's something. Party A does not have a natural right to profit, certainly not off B's hard work in creating a duplicate something.
There is no need for the government to split up the frequency bands and award sole rights to those bands to small groups. They could opt for a licensing scheme that instead regulated the type of equipment used to broadcast using spread spectrum technology.
1) Prior art does not automatically invalidate a patent. Most patents include references to previous patents that contain ideas of which the current patent constitutes a refinement or development.
2) In this case, using a "popularity" measurement to auto-complete would be different enough from all of the examples you listed to be a "new" idea.
3) None of the above should be construed as approval for a patent granted for this "invention". Patents should cover actual devices and inventions, not ways to use computers or ways of doing business.
(disclaimer: I am not a member of any organized religious community, Buddhist or Christian, as such I do not represent an "official" view of either herein)
:)
Buddhism is not a single entity about which generalizations are easily made, but self-sacrifice is most certainly not uncommon in Buddhism. There is even a type of buddha, the bodhisattva, who actually devotes this life (and perhaps all subsequent lives) to the practice of compassion.
Another way to look at the "sacrifice" motif in Judaism and Christianity is to see how sacrifice functions in that theology-- which is to say: it appears to be an appeasement of an angry God, not a modus operandi for practictioners. The most prominent OT example would be Abraham's near-miss with Isaac. In the end Christ becomes this same sort of blood sacrifice, according to the main interpretations of this traditions. In fact, he's the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It is at that time that the concept of a living sacrifice is introduced.
So, in Buddhism, you find none of the sense of sacrifice arising because there is no angry god to appease. However, you find plenty of emphasis on compassion. In fact some Buddhists, like the Dalai Lama, consider compassion a central feature of Buddhism.
Of course, Buddhism doesn't have quite the same dramatic flair as the good versus evil theme found in Judaism/Christianity, so you probably don't want to limit yourself to Buddhist thought when making an action film.
For my part, I consider the Matrix to have too many deficiencies in the plot/intellect department to be very philosophical. Great action film though. Awesome effects. And just resonant on enough levels to make you think... even if the movie itself isn't much of a resource, it might get you looking for resources that are more suitable.
Considering the error would have caused it to come up $80 short, perhaps the cashier should not be trying to compensate by only putting in a $10 from his own pocket (or short-changing a later customer). :)
But if you say it all snotty-like, with an obvious verbal sneer, you could always claim Fair Use under the exception for parodies. :)
Your post is a total non-sequitor to mine. I discussed the impacts of a zero growth policy for the public domain and the expanding definition of infringement. You seem to think I said "piracy" was some sort of protest. Nor did I mention gouging (never mind that several record companies were found guilty of illegal price-fixing). And you talk about "theft", when it's clear that the discussion is about copyright infringement, not shoplifting.
Yes, you forgot to somehow work in an intelligent discussion of Fair Use. Most of the copyright activity you're seeing isn't intended to clamp down on "piracy" (which really could be considered "free advertising" in many cases), it's intended to restrict Fair Use. One of the primary activities outlawed by the DMCA is, in fact, Fair Use. Many of the DRM schemes being floated will obliterate what's left of the right of first sale (which doctrine actually enshrines the right of a buyer to resell a good).
:)
Some things you could have mentioned if you weren't simply trying to be glib would have been the lawsuit filed against the publishers of "The Wind Done Gone", a work which was for a time prevented from dissemination due to concerns over "copyright infringement". Apparently it was not "fair" enough to write a literary criticism that worked well as a reworking of the original novel using the technique of parody.
You might also have mentioned the growing terms available to copyright holders. The public domain has effectively been squelched. If the pattern of lengthening the "limited term" of copyright and applying that lengthened term retroactively is not stopped, we will never get another new work in the public domain. After a while this means that our shared cultural background will be solely owned by corporate interests. If the original terms of copyright were still in effect, we could be enjoying a renaissance of remakes of older films and stories from the last century.
As it is, it's barely possible to make a film in which another copyrighted work appears, let alone actually retell the story from some other work. Shakespeare's plays are redone all the time, some with only the barest resemblance to the original... but no one argues that the makers of those works are simply plagiarists and pirates. In fact, often those redoing Shakespeare's plays belong to the same industry pushing for expansions on its ability to prevent others from doing anything similar with their own works.
Is copyright promoting innovations and cultural discourse, or preventing it? Is "piracy" really harming the industry? You forgot to ask those questions. I suggest you look at the revenue numbers coming out of Hollywood and then ask yourself whether online trading is hurting the movies. Look at the RIAA's numbers for revenues. Sure they claim losses due to "piracy", but those are made up numbers. Yes, their revenues and sales are down. But so is tourism and a lot of other consumer activity. Additionally the RIAA's been releasing less new stuff to buy.
So it would seem that you forgot to back up your assertion that copyright infringment is really the reason these lobbies are working so hard of late. In fact, it sounds to me like they're much less concerned with existing infringments than they are with expanding the definition of infringment.
Anything I forgot?
I don't see why a separate search would be useful. Perhaps if they had a keywords function that would apply to certain things, this would improve the ability to write a search in the first place. Something similar to the site tag where you coud then do search "foo bar keyword: -blog" to get results for foo bars that were not tagged as being in blogs. Conversely you could search +blog to only get blogs. Perhaps this could tie in with their directory-based listings as well.
You mean there's articles we're supposed to read? If we did that, how we would ever get in on the discussion while it was still "live"?
If you ask me, RAM is still too expensive to make this feasible. The article seems to assume that the examples listed are typical. But for so many purposes the idea of keeping the whole database in memory is a huge waste unless RAM gets a lot cheaper. For $100 you can get 120GB of HD or 256MB of RAM. That's not a comparable expense. And depending on the database, you are not likely to need the whole thing in RAM most of the time. In fact, how ofen is speed going to be important enough to justify this?
If you have a system where speed is of the essence and the size is not prohibitive, can't existing DB engines be tuned to cache as much as possible if not all of the data in RAM already?
Yet another Jon Katz alias....
:)
I think if you look over the 1500+ posts I've made to Slashdot in the last few years, you'll see that I am hardly Jon Katz. In fact, I've responded to others with "Jon Katz, is that you?" on probably more than one occasion. So your reply is neither accurate nor novel. But thanks for playing.
Sometimes makes you wonder if the large number of "2% smartest" people are related to the large number of people who think they are in the "top 5% wealthiest" category. :)
That said, our society doesn't generally deal well with extreme intelligence. As soon as it is realized that you score well on standardized tests (which is what these measures actually measure, not "intelligence"), there is extraordinary pressure not to "waste" that intelligence. It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course. This is probably a mistake.
Most schools are not designed to nurture independent learning (or thought, really). The medium is a large part of the message and that message is, "obey arbitrary authority, move around at the sound of the bell, you are smart enough to learn the world's history, physics, and advanced match, but you are not smart enough to manage your own time or decide who should teach you what."
Is it any wonder, then, that some of the nation's brightest stars get bored or upset or choose fairly antisocial ways of expressing themselves? The worst case is when those "smart" kids come from otherwise average families. Those parents may act like they've hit the lottery, or simply continue to apply pressure (apparently even subtle sticks are more common than any kind of carrot in these situations) to urge the kid to "use their full potential" or whatever. It's a bit like a gardener who would try to grow his plants faster by sitting in the garden and pulling on the tops of the plants.
"Paper or plastic" is a false dichotomy. The best shopping bags are made of cloth. Natural fiber cloth bags can last a very long time-- obviating the need for single or limited use bags. And waste reduction (through reuse) is far more important than any level of recyclability. Natural fiber cloth bags can also theoretically be recycled into paper.
I think you'd have a pretty hard time convincing a prison psychologist or preacher that to counsel inmates properly, she'd have definately needed to do hard time, because hey, how else could she relate?
Considering the U.S.' abnormally high incarceration rate, it might do us all some good to spend some time "inside" so we can better understand how that system functions. Law and order propenents have become increasingly strident in the last couple of years. So maybe it is a good idea for us all to learn to relate better to this approach.
As to computer security, the point you are looking for appears more to me to be one of: you don't have to forego ethics to learn to do nasty stuff. Practicing martial arts or firearms usage doesn't imply that one will become a serial killer... the real question is one of reform. Can a black hat reform? Yes. In some cases. In others, no. It depends on the circumstances. We have to look at both the nature and scope of the original criminal activity, the life circumstances of the hacker, and subsequent behavior. If someone cracked a few sytems at age 15, but then spent all the time from 18 to 35 as a responsible computer technician, I'd trust them more than I'd trust even that same someone at age 20.
What you really want are the originals. :)
... well, it's getting to be downright ubiquitous.
That said, Chobits is one of my favorite anime series. And I know almost everyone hated "Bicentennial Man", but I thought it was great, too (although not exactly Asimovian, if there is such a thing). The smarter computers get, expect more movies like "The Matrix" until our relationship to the machines settles down a bit.
And some other interesting reads on the mix of computer networks and humans would be: "Sisters of Glass", "Primary Inversion" (series), and
Anyone know if there's a good place to buy parts (like mannequins) that could be used to build humanoid looking computers? You've still got to do something intelligent with the monitor. Having a big old CRT just plunked down next to an off-the-wall case destroys the whole effect.
You're right, of course. So why should Mr. Perens continue to worry about "open source" rather than "free software"? This article talks at length, not about Free Software, but Open Source. And if there is no real difference between the two, why persist in using the more recent term "open source" at all?