Will you be walking up to guys on the street with a bullhorn and asking: "Sir, I can tell you might be interested in having a larger penis. Or how about some cheap viagra ? Wanna see some naked teens ?"
Surely it's safer for your kid if you watch the road ahead while driving a large, lethal piece of heavy metal, rather than try to zoom in and read street maps and watch your kiddy cam.
What's your kid gonna be doing, anyway ? Holding up a large sign saying "Daddy, stop being so bloody stupid" ?
I'm not sorry to see that many/.ers can see the economic reasons for one government to stop paying money hand over fist on a continuing basis to a foreign company - a company which, as a result, exerts some degree of power over that government's electronic and information policies. That money isn't on loan - it's gone from that country forever, into the coffers of another country.
In this case, you've got a nation-state building and using something for and by itself - something that will compete with products that private market workers and investors in another country far away are, in some cases, making large fortunes from.
If this is a problem, maybe the American government shouldn't have produced the Internet in the first place. Imagine how much better-off we'd all have been if that had never happened. Or maybe not.
If you're an unfortunate owner of an HP DJ9xx class printer (e.g. HP DeskJet 970) which the HP Linux driver doesn't (yet) support in hi-resolution printing mode, please see this entry in the Sourceforge forums for the HP Inkjet Driver project for a patch to HPIJS to support hi-res printing in 1200x1200 mode (and other enhancements).
The point you made at the end of your original comment was a good one. My comment was on your introductory paragraph - that's why I quoted it in my comment.
Learn to calm down and be less defensive - it will serve you well in life.
"If there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not....."
Well I guess this explains why Britain has never had any art or culture or scientific discoveries to speak of. Or France. Or Italy (what was all that Reneissance stuff anyway ?). The (Ancient) Greeks. The Egyptians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Indian sub-continent. Many other countries I haven't got room to mention, or know little enough about. What heathens we've all been compared to the current cultural output from the USA.
Sorry - I know there is some good art, literature, music and science being made in the USA today. I'm just saying you're over-stating your point.
On the contrary, I think this point is well worth making, for the following reason.
The original point behind patents was to protect the small inventor, giving them an instrument by which their inventions would be protected against larger, already-established companies just copying the idea and reaping the rewards for themselves.
However, the way in which patents are being used now is almost the exact opposite of what they were intended to achieve. They are being used by large companies to lock out (mainly smaller) competitors.
Re:Someone finally makes Linux apps look consisten
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, I think that the choice between the two desktops is good, and that (healthy) competition between them helps both of them improve.
Red Hat's idea sounds good in practise, but what I would like to see is the following:
a) A set of themes which make KDE and Gnome look and behave similarly (as similarly as possible, anyway);
AND
b) Some sort of unified control panel application which applies settings, themes, etc, to BOTH KDE and Gnome environments.
It should be possible to have a control panel application which detects which environment it's running under and uses the appropriate GUI toolkit - separation of program logic from GUI code and all that - even to detect at run-time whether both KDE and Gnome are installed.
Of course, both environments will not be identical. But the differences between them could be minimised in this way.
Is that right? Wow, you really taught me something there I don't know already...
OK, so you know that, and I know that, but do they (the people that make the decisions) know that?
Almost certainly not. It's not their job to know.
Which is why Red Hat, or IBM, or a trustable (to them) organisation of groups and individuals should be talking to them and explaining the alternatives, and the advantages of the alternatives.
Why the hell don't Red Hat's marketing department get off their a*ses and make a similar offer EVERY TIME Microsoft tries something like this.
Red Hat are a commercial entity, and obviously want to make money. But why don't they offer government organisations like this all the free software they could want, for no money EVER, and just charge them for supporting it?
For all you cynics out there that think you can't do anything to stop this:
1) The UK Patent Office undertook a consultation exercise into extending European patent law to cover software and business methods in the same way as in the US. They only had 285 responses - 241 individuals and 44 organisations. See their conclusions from the exercise. In particular:
"To extend patentability so that these developers have to divert time and effort into making sure they are not infringing patents, and seeking and enforcing them, would impose a major burden. The necessary case for believing that a significant extension of patentability would increase innovation in this field simply has not been made. In fact, as many respondents suggested, it could have the opposite effect."
They will have an influence on the European patent office. Other influences may prove stronger - the battle is not yet over.
2) A couple of months ago, the government in the UK was planning on making everyone's phone records (including mobile phone location data) and internet data (URLs visited and emails sent and received (header details, I think - not sure) available to many government departments, local councils and even private utility companies. There was a large outcry here. People were encouraged to fax and write to their MPs. What happened? The legislation was withdrawn, and the minister responsible, David Blunkett (a SENIOR government minister) even apologised about it.
Yes, these ARE different issues. But when a change in the law like this is being proposed, if you go about it in the correct manner you can have a (small) influence on what happens. If enough people get involved, you can have a major influence.
You're not the only one to find a suspicious increase in the number of "Microsoft-friendly" posts here recently. Mind you, that's not to say I agree with every anti-Microsoft comment that gets written here.
Re:Way to fast, way to perfect
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yes, (s)he does.
I would love to see some form of update checking and/or installation method for servers, especially the variety that are intended to be installed, turned on, and forgotten, like email notifications or schedulable updates."
Hmmmmm, so you're experienced at running servers, are you? And you'd love to see some organisation you know little about randomly updating your servers with whatever code they like, whenever they feel like it?
Are security and reliability really your top priorities?
You're stretching your point a bit, but it's still a valid one.
However, why should the US use strongarm tactics to take money from a poor country like Peru to give to rich stock-owners and software engineers in one of the richest countries in the world ?
Yeah, his comment about the 45,000 different categories was a strange one. It all depends how you classify "categories" - classify them differently, and I'm sure you could divide everything it is possible to talk about into, say, 12 categories, or 100, or 3000, or......
I also don't buy his comments about human consciousness. If a brain's consciousness is a product of the program it's running, then is it the program itself which exhibits consciousness, or is it the act of running that program?
If it's the first, then would you consider a printout of the program to have consciousness ?
If it's the second, then imagine running through the above printout of the program using pencil and noteped to record data (imagine being like a slow microprocessor - maybe one instruction per 20 seconds). Are the printout, pencil and notepad conscious and alive ? Can you cause pain to a sentient being (the pencil and paper) by writing the wrong thing ? Would it be ethical to ever stop writing ?
Or perhaps consciousness is a "quantum" effect - i.e. once something reaches a certain threshold of processing power it acquires a level of consciousness ? Well, if this is the case, does that mean that the Pentium XXXII 358Ghz will start to exhibit consciousness, whereas the 320GHz version (which runs the same software, although slower (though not as slow as pencil and paper)), does not ?
Or perhaps there is some sort of "critical mass" effect, beyond which strange physical interactions which may lead to consciousness start taking place ? If there is any scientific basis to human consciousness and self-awareness - even the concept of a soul - then this is the only explanation I can really start to believe in.
If this sort of thing interests you, be sure to read "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose - it's several years old, and may even be out of print now. He presents many more arguments than I have here - better explained, and better thought through. It's a must-read.
Sorry if I've drifted off-topic. But then again, I'm only human;)
Slashdot Mirror
Groan...
;)
Band ? You should be
Will you be walking up to guys on the street with a bullhorn and asking: "Sir, I can tell you might be interested in having a larger penis. Or how about some cheap viagra ? Wanna see some naked teens ?"
Surely it's safer for your kid if you watch the road ahead while driving a large, lethal piece of heavy metal, rather than try to zoom in and read street maps and watch your kiddy cam.
What's your kid gonna be doing, anyway ? Holding up a large sign saying "Daddy, stop being so bloody stupid" ?
I'm not sorry to see that many /.ers can see the economic reasons for one government to stop paying money hand over fist on a continuing basis to a foreign company - a company which, as a result, exerts some degree of power over that government's electronic and information policies. That money isn't on loan - it's gone from that country forever, into the coffers of another country.
In this case, you've got a nation-state building and using something for and by itself - something that will compete with products that private market workers and investors in another country far away are, in some cases, making large fortunes from.
If this is a problem, maybe the American government shouldn't have produced the Internet in the first place. Imagine how much better-off we'd all have been if that had never happened. Or maybe not.
If you're an unfortunate owner of an HP DJ9xx class printer (e.g. HP DeskJet 970) which the HP Linux driver doesn't (yet) support in hi-resolution printing mode, please see this entry in the Sourceforge forums for the HP Inkjet Driver project for a patch to HPIJS to support hi-res printing in 1200x1200 mode (and other enhancements).
It's here.
Whoa...easy, tiger...
The point you made at the end of your original comment was a good one. My comment was on your introductory paragraph - that's why I quoted it in my comment.
Learn to calm down and be less defensive - it will serve you well in life.
"If there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not....."
Well I guess this explains why Britain has never had any art or culture or scientific discoveries to speak of. Or France. Or Italy (what was all that Reneissance stuff anyway ?). The (Ancient) Greeks. The Egyptians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Indian sub-continent. Many other countries I haven't got room to mention, or know little enough about. What heathens we've all been compared to the current cultural output from the USA.
Sorry - I know there is some good art, literature, music and science being made in the USA today. I'm just saying you're over-stating your point.
You might be interested in this link from The Register about how a crack of the RIAA website means you can (or could) download MP3s from the RIAA's own website.
Sadly, I don't think the person your are about to see is likely to be impressed by reading Slashdot.
However, I DO think they might be impressed by The UK Government's Conclusions to the question: 'Should Patents be Granted for Computer Software or Ways of Doing Business'
On the contrary, I think this point is well worth making, for the following reason.
The original point behind patents was to protect the small inventor, giving them an instrument by which their inventions would be protected against larger, already-established companies just copying the idea and reaping the rewards for themselves.
However, the way in which patents are being used now is almost the exact opposite of what they were intended to achieve. They are being used by large companies to lock out (mainly smaller) competitors.
Actually, I think that the choice between the two desktops is good, and that (healthy) competition between them helps both of them improve.
Red Hat's idea sounds good in practise, but what I would like to see is the following:
a) A set of themes which make KDE and Gnome look and behave similarly (as similarly as possible, anyway);
AND
b) Some sort of unified control panel application which applies settings, themes, etc, to BOTH KDE and Gnome environments.
It should be possible to have a control panel application which detects which environment it's running under and uses the appropriate GUI toolkit - separation of program logic from GUI code and all that - even to detect at run-time whether both KDE and Gnome are installed.
Of course, both environments will not be identical. But the differences between them could be minimised in this way.
Looks like Darwin was right, after all.....
"You download the goddamn ISOs for free....."
Is that right? Wow, you really taught me something there I don't know already...
OK, so you know that, and I know that, but do they (the people that make the decisions) know that?
Almost certainly not. It's not their job to know.
Which is why Red Hat, or IBM, or a trustable (to them) organisation of groups and individuals should be talking to them and explaining the alternatives, and the advantages of the alternatives.
Yeah.
Why the hell don't Red Hat's marketing department get off their a*ses and make a similar offer EVERY TIME Microsoft tries something like this.
Red Hat are a commercial entity, and obviously want to make money. But why don't they offer government organisations like this all the free software they could want, for no money EVER, and just charge them for supporting it?
For all you cynics out there that think you can't do anything to stop this:
1) The UK Patent Office undertook a consultation exercise into extending European patent law to cover software and business methods in the same way as in the US. They only had 285 responses - 241 individuals and 44 organisations. See their conclusions from the exercise. In particular:
"To extend patentability so that these developers have to divert time and effort into making sure they are not infringing patents, and seeking and enforcing them, would impose a major burden. The necessary case for believing that a significant extension of patentability would increase innovation in this field simply has not been made. In fact, as many respondents suggested, it could have the opposite effect."
They will have an influence on the European patent office. Other influences may prove stronger - the battle is not yet over.
2) A couple of months ago, the government in the UK was planning on making everyone's phone records (including mobile phone location data) and internet data (URLs visited and emails sent and received (header details, I think - not sure) available to many government departments, local councils and even private utility companies. There was a large outcry here. People were encouraged to fax and write to their MPs. What happened? The legislation was withdrawn, and the minister responsible, David Blunkett (a SENIOR government minister) even apologised about it.
Yes, these ARE different issues. But when a change in the law like this is being proposed, if you go about it in the correct manner you can have a (small) influence on what happens. If enough people get involved, you can have a major influence.
Come on, tell us.
She turned you down for a date, right ?
Well said.
You're not the only one to find a suspicious increase in the number of "Microsoft-friendly" posts here recently. Mind you, that's not to say I agree with every anti-Microsoft comment that gets written here.
Yes, (s)he does.
I would love to see some form of update checking and/or installation method for servers, especially the variety that are intended to be installed, turned on, and forgotten, like email notifications or schedulable updates."
Hmmmmm, so you're experienced at running servers, are you? And you'd love to see some organisation you know little about randomly updating your servers with whatever code they like, whenever they feel like it?
Are security and reliability really your top priorities?
....I thought the title was VNC Server for Toasters and Light-Sandwiches.
But then I realised there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Why do people always get mad when people get mad when their story doesn't get posted?
;)
Sorry, I'm just sick of always reading these complaints.
You're stretching your point a bit, but it's still a valid one.
However, why should the US use strongarm tactics to take money from a poor country like Peru to give to rich stock-owners and software engineers in one of the richest countries in the world ?
Curious phrase for Slashdot to use, considering this non-anonymous reader (i.e. me) submitted the same story a few hours ago.
OK, as it's you.....I won't put anything substantive in my reply either ;)
Seriously, is it as easy to comprehend consciousness?
Not as easy as it was to comprehend that sentence.
You have to puzzle through paragraphs of sophmoric nonsense?
Oops...I believe I just have.
Yeah, his comment about the 45,000 different categories was a strange one. It all depends how you classify "categories" - classify them differently, and I'm sure you could divide everything it is possible to talk about into, say, 12 categories, or 100, or 3000, or......
;)
I also don't buy his comments about human consciousness. If a brain's consciousness is a product of the program it's running, then is it the program itself which exhibits consciousness, or is it the act of running that program?
If it's the first, then would you consider a printout of the program to have consciousness ?
If it's the second, then imagine running through the above printout of the program using pencil and noteped to record data (imagine being like a slow microprocessor - maybe one instruction per 20 seconds). Are the printout, pencil and notepad conscious and alive ? Can you cause pain to a sentient being (the pencil and paper) by writing the wrong thing ? Would it be ethical to ever stop writing ?
Or perhaps consciousness is a "quantum" effect - i.e. once something reaches a certain threshold of processing power it acquires a level of consciousness ? Well, if this is the case, does that mean that the Pentium XXXII 358Ghz will start to exhibit consciousness, whereas the 320GHz version (which runs the same software, although slower (though not as slow as pencil and paper)), does not ?
Or perhaps there is some sort of "critical mass" effect, beyond which strange physical interactions which may lead to consciousness start taking place ? If there is any scientific basis to human consciousness and self-awareness - even the concept of a soul - then this is the only explanation I can really start to believe in.
If this sort of thing interests you, be sure to read "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose - it's several years old, and may even be out of print now. He presents many more arguments than I have here - better explained, and better thought through. It's a must-read.
Sorry if I've drifted off-topic. But then again, I'm only human
Tying up emergency lines can cost lives.
Compared to that I say BOLLOCKS to the small amount of taxpayer dollars it costs you.