Las Vegas has over 300,000 hotel rooms, almost all of which are full on any given weekend. Over 15 MILLION people come to Las Vegas to visit every year. By the way, the average Las Vegas visitor spends over $950 while they are there.
Yeah, I love lawyers. They have the right idea. They make a lot of money and don't work hard. If you're smart enough, you can not work hard and make a lot of money too.
I can't believe, for instance, people get paid 65k a year to write "Visual Basic" "code". But someone has to I guess. I guess.
Simply outlawing them, or offering a basic "If someone pays you for the right to use the software, you MUST offer them the ability to install and use the software without agreeing to any conditions beyond those implied by copyright law and first-use/right of first sale doctrines." is not going to help the lawyers. It removes them from the process, and a good thing too.
Yes, this sounds like a good idea on the surface, yes? But it is just asking for trouble. The laws as they are can be screwed up. And sure, some change might be due. But who are you asking to institute this change? CONGRESS?! heh, I think not.
Perhaps this is a good idea: State laws, a proposition or referendum proposing to void EULA validity? Then at least the PEOPLE get to write the law, etc.
Because you know congress will sneak in some backdoor that just makes us all worse off than we were before.
"It's smart to ALWAYS know what you are signing for. Because you could be signing away the life of your child." That's what I get from this post.
Not "everything should be spelled out in 20 different languages to be fair" "we should all get everything for free." "I'm a worthless communist" as you intended to say.
I'm sorry to be acidic, but I never said I don't support consumer advocacy. I said I don't support LAWS governing what software CAN and CANNOT do. There are ALREADY laws prohibiting viruses and malicious, destructive software. Most people don't care if their spare computer cycles are used by some company if, in return, they get a good piece of software. And if it screws up their computer, they are happy to have it fixed.
There does not need to be LEGISLATION in this matter. There needs to be education. People should not just download and run software from untrusted sites. EVERYONE knows that. So in this case, I do not shed a tear.
he's basically someone who's only skill is that he has a slight bit of knowledge ver the average computer user and feels he needs to charge ridiculous prices for his *ahem* expertise. Try doing real work with computers for a living.
Hey, I just like the BMW. A LOT. I could be coding device drivers, but I prefer to have sex with girls. Being a computer "doctor" lets me work doctor's hours. And I can take a vacation whenever I want.
Personally, if you're not happy, then what the fuck is the point of existing? Coding device drivers does not make me happy. It can be interesting, but for about 24 hours straight only. I prefer to keep my sanity. So I fix stupid Windows problems? Does that make me not "l33t"? FUCK YES. Do have have an easy job? FUCK YES. Do I love my life? FUCK YES. You may answer these questions differently for yourself, but I am happy where I'm at and no ANONYMOUS COWARD can knock me off my pedestal.
BTW, got my +1 bonus today, so I'm just abusing it a bit to get my voice heard just this once.
True. Limit. But not prevent. I mean, no one would make any money if everything was fair. If it was FAIR, everyone would have the same stuff, and we'd all be Marxists.
But that just doesn't work:) Some people are better suited to the enviroment than others; not that we shouldn't help the less fortunate. But it's ok to make a living also.
NoBODY gets filthy rich being honest. I AM honest about my work. I tell people what their problem is because I'd rather not come back to fix a little thing 10 times, even if I'm making 75 bucks to do it. There's just no CHALLENGE to it.
So maybe it's all a question of honor. I mean, without problems, I wouldn't have a job, so I like problems. But you can't take TOO much advantage of people. Then you start being evil.
Hey, let's just pave the way for lawyers to have further control of the fucking world! That's exactly what we need! To have this issue debated and decided by computer ILLITERATES who will end up fucking us all straight up the pooper! YAY! HAVEN'T WE LEARNED, FOLKS?!
If you are too LAZY to learn the facts, to learn how to compile your own open source software, to learn how to fix your own plumbing, YOU ARE GOING TO BE GETTING SCREWED BY SOMEONE WHO DOES KNOW.
So please. Don't ask for new laws. Learn the facts. And then make money off the people who don't know them.
Hey, want a bit of advice? DON'T DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL SOFTWARE FROM THE INTERNET if you are afraid of getting jacked! DUH! The last thing we need is MORE LAWS taking this shit into courts for computer ILLITERATE LAWYERS AND JUDGES decide what PEOPLE WHO ARE SMART ENOUGH TO BE CAUTIOUS WITH THEIR COMPUTERS can and can't get.
If people were smart enough, they would just download open source software, examine the code and compile it themselves. But if you are too LAZY to do that, don't put the blame on some company who's just trying to make a buck or two.
Thank god someone agrees with me. Honestly, why should I waste my time looking after stupid consumers when I could be making money off them?
*I* know how to protect my computer. The last thing *I* need is more laws telling me what I can and can't do. That just makes more jobs for lawyers. I'd rather the money goes into my home computer consulting pocket.:)
Boo hoo, the poor public. If they cared enough about their computers and what was happening to them they would learn it. THEY DON'T CARE. THEY DON'T READ SLASHDOT. THEY DON'T SPEND 8 HOURS A DAY SURFING THE WEB. I think it's fine to exploit consumers weaknesses like this. Every other industry does, why shouldn't software?
There is not a box on the front page of the New York Times that says "Certain stuff written in this paper is false." Normal people assume everthing in there is true, and smart people know to take it with a rock of salt.
The same with computers. People SHOULD just assume the software works and is safe, and if you're smart, you won't and you will read the EULA.
Then, when the conseqences occur, hire a professional to fix it. If people shouldn't be expected to learn, why should we be expected to protect them out of the goodness of our hearts? I am a home computer "consultant" and I make good money fixing people's computers. People who don't give a flying F what's running on it, so long as they can look at their porn and write their emails and print their Word docs. People who screw up their computers and are totally fine with paying someone to fix it. Real consumers. Realists. Not cheapskate wannabe good citizens who like to spout off about "protecting the consumer". You've obviously never had a real job or you'd know there are no friends in business.
So, I'm glad companies take advantage of consumers, and I'm glad computers screw themselves up. Because it gives me a job. Don't try to take it away from me.
I am glad that I do home computer consulting for a living. There are so many idiots out there who just install whatever software they find without knowing the facts. And I'm glad that most of the facts are only availible on obscure sites until most people have already been hurt. I LOVE AMERICA. I am glad that companies to stupid stuff like this to hurt consumer's PCs. Somebody has to fix the damage, therefore it translates into MONEY for me ($75/hour).
I am no troll. This is the truth. It's not very nice, but look at how much a body shop charges. Or a plumber. People don't want to be protected. They do not want knowledge. They want to make mistakes, and they want to pay to have them fixed.
You have a good band, that people want to hear. If you self promote, you can only reach a few hundred people at once to begin with. And only say 1% will tell a friend. And only 1% of them will tell a friend.
So then you self promote to radio stations. Figuring you send a copy of your demo to a few hundred radio stations, and only about 1% of them will play it. But they are playing it out to hundreds more people who also might tell a friend. And so on.
Then you have to figure out how to get the CDs to people to sell for you, or be in all these places when it plays on the radio (impossible).
Now a BIG record company can just take a good band, and with one move drop it on 1000s of Viacom, GE, Disney, AOL/TW TV and Radio outlets, 2461 magazines, 100,000 websites, and then move the product into 200,000 record stores the same day.
And so everyone in the human population who will possibly like the band hears it all at once or hears it from a friend within WEEKS. This wouldn't be a problem but for the fact they (the big record companies) are doing it soley as entertainment soley for profit, rather than the classic uses of music (artistic, social change, etc.). Which is depressing.
The independents now at least have the internet, which raises the POSSIBILITY of reaching all those people at once, but there is a high noise to signal ratio, and the audience is also the director, meaning they are not CAPTIVE. So, you have to be monumentally interesting, entertaining, AND know how to get people to come to your website to sell music online.
Doing all these things is definitely easier than the classic touring and underground zine methods of old, but it's still difficult.
No one ever said being a professional musician is easy. It's a FULL TIME *JOB*, and the harder you work, the more success you will find. But, just as not all businessmen become rich executives, not everyone can top Billboard..
But dammit, it is the funnest hard job I've ever had.
Well, in "Cybernetics and Society: The Human Use of Humans" by Norbert Wiener, the author talks about messages--communication. Links to a web site are messages given to people using the web that a given site/page/whatever exists. They are easy to make use of, since all you have to do is click it and whatever is on the other end is given.
This is all fairly obvious. The neat thing is how these messages and the messages they point to interact. Dr. Wiener says that the more unique a message, the more "important" it is. This is simply because an overused message (a cliche) quickly becomes filtered by the human mind, and loses its meaning.
Take the Amazon example, for instance: How often do you click a LINK to Amazon? Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of links to Amazon, but I would guess most of them NEVER get clicked. Why? Because there are too many of them. The first time I saw one, I followed it, but now I just ignore them. I almost never click on Amazon links because I know it goes to some bookstore.
When I do go to Amazon, I just type the DOMAIN name into my browser, and go directly there, and do my own searching, follow my own links.
So, basically, there is an upper limit to the number of links before they essentially become useless. Of course, this upper limit is dependent on the total number of users who haven't seen the links, which is increasing every day as new people come on to the web. As the number of links reach this critical mass, more and more people are just typing in the domain name rather than following a link.
This is Google's essential flaw. It does not recognize that a site like Amazon does not need an entry in a search engine. There are enough links out there already for just about anyone to find it. Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
How are new sites found out about and linked enough to show up in an engine like Google? Advertising. Mostly word of mouth and link ads, and in certain cases print and television advertising (although this is less effective, because it requires the user additional steps to make use of the message (ie: remembering the domain name at a much later time and then typing it in), which is why the.com ad explosion on TV failed to do anything..)
Really, to be effective, you need to have 10-20 contacts online, have each link to your site. Spread the word as much as you can. And save your ad budget until your word of mouth traffic reaches critical mass. Then spend it on bandwidth.
Really, time is the only key. Oh, and having something useful or funny.
Anyway, this quickly turned to the theories of getting a lot of hits, and I apologize, but you can see that the middle is the best place to be, and maybe Google will recognize this. This would do a LOT for online commerce, and the economy in general. Support bell curve relevance.
Off topic, but AUTOMATONS are exactly what the public school system is designed to produce. The American public school system is remeniscent of industrial revolution factories--it is designed to produce a product: adult bodies who do work. It just covers it up with the word "education."
Public schools (besides certain gifted and talented programs) do not teach children to think for themselves. They do not teach children logic. They do not teach children the orgins of language.
What do they teach? American patriotism. Basic math. HYGIENE. Obviously America has bigger problems than we think. But, for the average Joey, who's going to grow up to work construction or be a mechanic, why fill his head with nonsense like the latin root of hygeine?
So, let's face it: if you want your kid to be intellectual, you are going to have to teach him/her yourself. That's good. That gives you a choice in the matter. But make sure you let him know that most of the kids in Public school are going to be automatons, american robots, and that he will one day be their boss.
I think lawyers (as well as computer scientists) are simply guilty of creating the system which they work with. Lawyers created the legal system in such a way to require lawyers. Computer scientists have created computer systems to require computer scientists. It's classic self-validation, self-preservation, self-ishness that drives the capitalist USSA.
I think it's wonderful, because you create your own job. I just wish I knew more about law, because that is the fastest growing self-perpetuating system and is probably going to be a VERY good business to be in (it already is).
Lawyers will tell you (and rightfully so) that as the world gets more complex, and the world population grows larger, the possibility of dispute increases accordingly. Of course, they neglect to mention the fact that they are the major cause of dispute..
But, really, it's amazing that 6 or 7 billion people can all pretty much get along on one planet, and really, unfair stuff doesn't happen all that often. But, to remain on topic, it is pretty funny when a system we setup to be foolproof ends up making a fool of us all.
I think this should be a lesson to all the judges out there: they need to take much more into consideration than just a patent application. And they do. If only they couldn't be bribed.
Welcome to the world, mate. Every large corporation has mafia at the head. GE, Walmart.. Hell, Jack Valenti (head of RIAA) sounds pretty fucking italian.
The parent post makes a very good point. And how hard would it be, once the RIAA threatened action, to simply make the server "disappear?" In Court: "What? We didn't have a server. Prove that there's a server."
This whole "story" smells to high heaven. I bet this is just a publicity stunt by the RIAA.
NOBODY just gives some organization 1 million bucks, no matter how threatened they are.
I bet the RIAA handed them 1M and said, "hey, we're going to bust you, then you publically give us the 1M. in return, we will publically show how grateful we are by using your digital rights management product."
Please people, this isn't a story. This is a publicity stunt. 1 million is chump change, anyway.
Actually, to really understand what everyone means by "time travel" you have to understand time itself. "time" as humans know it, is simply a uniform and repeated measurement of change.
The change, of course, is the increase of "entropy" or "chaos" in the universe. Time travel requires that you somehow hold the traveling object still (0 degress kelvin) while somehow reversing every interaction in the universe (or maybe a local area) and then starting the mix up again.
It has been shown that there are "impressions" made by small subatomic particles as they travel forward in "Time" (ie they progress toward chaos) that travel backwards in time (towards order).
Of course, this may just be an artifact of using symbolic math as a model.
Slashdot Mirror
Las Vegas has over 300,000 hotel rooms, almost all of which are full on any given weekend. Over 15 MILLION people come to Las Vegas to visit every year. By the way, the average Las Vegas visitor spends over $950 while they are there.
Tens of thousands, hah.
Yeah, I love lawyers. They have the right idea. They make a lot of money and don't work hard. If you're smart enough, you can not work hard and make a lot of money too.
I can't believe, for instance, people get paid 65k a year to write "Visual Basic" "code". But someone has to I guess. I guess.
Simply outlawing them, or offering a basic "If someone pays you for the right to use the software, you MUST offer them the ability to install and use the software without agreeing to any conditions beyond those implied by copyright law and first-use/right of first sale doctrines." is not going to help the lawyers. It removes them from the process, and a good thing too.
Yes, this sounds like a good idea on the surface, yes? But it is just asking for trouble. The laws as they are can be screwed up. And sure, some change might be due. But who are you asking to institute this change? CONGRESS?! heh, I think not.
Perhaps this is a good idea: State laws, a proposition or referendum proposing to void EULA validity? Then at least the PEOPLE get to write the law, etc.
Because you know congress will sneak in some backdoor that just makes us all worse off than we were before.
"It's smart to ALWAYS know what you are signing for. Because you could be signing away the life of your child." That's what I get from this post.
Not "everything should be spelled out in 20 different languages to be fair" "we should all get everything for free." "I'm a worthless communist" as you intended to say.
I'm sorry to be acidic, but I never said I don't support consumer advocacy. I said I don't support LAWS governing what software CAN and CANNOT do. There are ALREADY laws prohibiting viruses and malicious, destructive software. Most people don't care if their spare computer cycles are used by some company if, in return, they get a good piece of software. And if it screws up their computer, they are happy to have it fixed.
There does not need to be LEGISLATION in this matter. There needs to be education. People should not just download and run software from untrusted sites. EVERYONE knows that. So in this case, I do not shed a tear.
No pity for the majority.
Cheers.
I can't even proofread my posts or put in a /i to delimit the comment. what a lamer.
he's basically someone who's only skill is that he has a slight bit of knowledge ver the average computer user and feels he needs to charge ridiculous prices for his *ahem* expertise. Try doing real work with computers for a living.
Hey, I just like the BMW. A LOT. I could be coding device drivers, but I prefer to have sex with girls. Being a computer "doctor" lets me work doctor's hours. And I can take a vacation whenever I want.
Personally, if you're not happy, then what the fuck is the point of existing? Coding device drivers does not make me happy. It can be interesting, but for about 24 hours straight only. I prefer to keep my sanity. So I fix stupid Windows problems? Does that make me not "l33t"? FUCK YES. Do have have an easy job? FUCK YES. Do I love my life? FUCK YES. You may answer these questions differently for yourself, but I am happy where I'm at and no ANONYMOUS COWARD can knock me off my pedestal.
BTW, got my +1 bonus today, so I'm just abusing it a bit to get my voice heard just this once.
Cheers.
True. Limit. But not prevent. I mean, no one would make any money if everything was fair. If it was FAIR, everyone would have the same stuff, and we'd all be Marxists.
:) Some people are better suited to the enviroment than others; not that we shouldn't help the less fortunate. But it's ok to make a living also.
:)
But that just doesn't work
NoBODY gets filthy rich being honest. I AM honest about my work. I tell people what their problem is because I'd rather not come back to fix a little thing 10 times, even if I'm making 75 bucks to do it. There's just no CHALLENGE to it.
So maybe it's all a question of honor. I mean, without problems, I wouldn't have a job, so I like problems. But you can't take TOO much advantage of people. Then you start being evil.
I've got my Karma to worry about
Then you don't deserve a wonderful program like Kazaa without spyware.
Cheers.
Hey, let's just pave the way for lawyers to have further control of the fucking world! That's exactly what we need! To have this issue debated and decided by computer ILLITERATES who will end up fucking us all straight up the pooper! YAY! HAVEN'T WE LEARNED, FOLKS?!
If you are too LAZY to learn the facts, to learn how to compile your own open source software, to learn how to fix your own plumbing, YOU ARE GOING TO BE GETTING SCREWED BY SOMEONE WHO DOES KNOW.
So please. Don't ask for new laws. Learn the facts. And then make money off the people who don't know them.
Hey, want a bit of advice? DON'T DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL SOFTWARE FROM THE INTERNET if you are afraid of getting jacked! DUH! The last thing we need is MORE LAWS taking this shit into courts for computer ILLITERATE LAWYERS AND JUDGES decide what PEOPLE WHO ARE SMART ENOUGH TO BE CAUTIOUS WITH THEIR COMPUTERS can and can't get.
:)
If people were smart enough, they would just download open source software, examine the code and compile it themselves. But if you are too LAZY to do that, don't put the blame on some company who's just trying to make a buck or two.
Some people's children.
Thank god someone agrees with me. Honestly, why should I waste my time looking after stupid consumers when I could be making money off them?
:)
*I* know how to protect my computer. The last thing *I* need is more laws telling me what I can and can't do. That just makes more jobs for lawyers. I'd rather the money goes into my home computer consulting pocket.
Boo hoo, the poor public. If they cared enough about their computers and what was happening to them they would learn it. THEY DON'T CARE. THEY DON'T READ SLASHDOT. THEY DON'T SPEND 8 HOURS A DAY SURFING THE WEB. I think it's fine to exploit consumers weaknesses like this. Every other industry does, why shouldn't software?
There is not a box on the front page of the New York Times that says "Certain stuff written in this paper is false." Normal people assume everthing in there is true, and smart people know to take it with a rock of salt.
The same with computers. People SHOULD just assume the software works and is safe, and if you're smart, you won't and you will read the EULA.
Then, when the conseqences occur, hire a professional to fix it. If people shouldn't be expected to learn, why should we be expected to protect them out of the goodness of our hearts? I am a home computer "consultant" and I make good money fixing people's computers. People who don't give a flying F what's running on it, so long as they can look at their porn and write their emails and print their Word docs. People who screw up their computers and are totally fine with paying someone to fix it. Real consumers. Realists. Not cheapskate wannabe good citizens who like to spout off about "protecting the consumer". You've obviously never had a real job or you'd know there are no friends in business.
So, I'm glad companies take advantage of consumers, and I'm glad computers screw themselves up. Because it gives me a job. Don't try to take it away from me.
Cheers.
I am glad that I do home computer consulting for a living. There are so many idiots out there who just install whatever software they find without knowing the facts. And I'm glad that most of the facts are only availible on obscure sites until most people have already been hurt. I LOVE AMERICA. I am glad that companies to stupid stuff like this to hurt consumer's PCs. Somebody has to fix the damage, therefore it translates into MONEY for me ($75/hour).
I am no troll. This is the truth. It's not very nice, but look at how much a body shop charges. Or a plumber. People don't want to be protected. They do not want knowledge. They want to make mistakes, and they want to pay to have them fixed.
God Bless America.
Cheers.
It's more about time than about the promotion.
Think about it like this:
You have a good band, that people want to hear. If you self promote, you can only reach a few hundred people at once to begin with. And only say 1% will tell a friend. And only 1% of them will tell a friend.
So then you self promote to radio stations. Figuring you send a copy of your demo to a few hundred radio stations, and only about 1% of them will play it. But they are playing it out to hundreds more people who also might tell a friend. And so on.
Then you have to figure out how to get the CDs to people to sell for you, or be in all these places when it plays on the radio (impossible).
Now a BIG record company can just take a good band, and with one move drop it on 1000s of Viacom, GE, Disney, AOL/TW TV and Radio outlets, 2461 magazines, 100,000 websites, and then move the product into 200,000 record stores the same day.
And so everyone in the human population who will possibly like the band hears it all at once or hears it from a friend within WEEKS. This wouldn't be a problem but for the fact they (the big record companies) are doing it soley as entertainment soley for profit, rather than the classic uses of music (artistic, social change, etc.). Which is depressing.
The independents now at least have the internet, which raises the POSSIBILITY of reaching all those people at once, but there is a high noise to signal ratio, and the audience is also the director, meaning they are not CAPTIVE. So, you have to be monumentally interesting, entertaining, AND know how to get people to come to your website to sell music online.
Doing all these things is definitely easier than the classic touring and underground zine methods of old, but it's still difficult.
No one ever said being a professional musician is easy. It's a FULL TIME *JOB*, and the harder you work, the more success you will find. But, just as not all businessmen become rich executives, not everyone can top Billboard..
But dammit, it is the funnest hard job I've ever had.
Well, in "Cybernetics and Society: The Human Use of Humans" by Norbert Wiener, the author talks about messages--communication. Links to a web site are messages given to people using the web that a given site/page/whatever exists. They are easy to make use of, since all you have to do is click it and whatever is on the other end is given.
.com ad explosion on TV failed to do anything..)
This is all fairly obvious. The neat thing is how these messages and the messages they point to interact. Dr. Wiener says that the more unique a message, the more "important" it is. This is simply because an overused message (a cliche) quickly becomes filtered by the human mind, and loses its meaning.
Take the Amazon example, for instance: How often do you click a LINK to Amazon? Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of links to Amazon, but I would guess most of them NEVER get clicked. Why? Because there are too many of them. The first time I saw one, I followed it, but now I just ignore them. I almost never click on Amazon links because I know it goes to some bookstore.
When I do go to Amazon, I just type the DOMAIN name into my browser, and go directly there, and do my own searching, follow my own links.
So, basically, there is an upper limit to the number of links before they essentially become useless. Of course, this upper limit is dependent on the total number of users who haven't seen the links, which is increasing every day as new people come on to the web. As the number of links reach this critical mass, more and more people are just typing in the domain name rather than following a link.
This is Google's essential flaw. It does not recognize that a site like Amazon does not need an entry in a search engine. There are enough links out there already for just about anyone to find it. Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
How are new sites found out about and linked enough to show up in an engine like Google? Advertising. Mostly word of mouth and link ads, and in certain cases print and television advertising (although this is less effective, because it requires the user additional steps to make use of the message (ie: remembering the domain name at a much later time and then typing it in), which is why the
Really, to be effective, you need to have 10-20 contacts online, have each link to your site. Spread the word as much as you can. And save your ad budget until your word of mouth traffic reaches critical mass. Then spend it on bandwidth.
Really, time is the only key. Oh, and having something useful or funny.
Anyway, this quickly turned to the theories of getting a lot of hits, and I apologize, but you can see that the middle is the best place to be, and maybe Google will recognize this. This would do a LOT for online commerce, and the economy in general. Support bell curve relevance.
Cheers.
Ephedrine is the reason I passed calculus. Mmm, synthetic adrenaline.
Cheers.
Off topic, but AUTOMATONS are exactly what the public school system is designed to produce. The American public school system is remeniscent of industrial revolution factories--it is designed to produce a product: adult bodies who do work. It just covers it up with the word "education."
Public schools (besides certain gifted and talented programs) do not teach children to think for themselves. They do not teach children logic. They do not teach children the orgins of language.
What do they teach? American patriotism. Basic math. HYGIENE. Obviously America has bigger problems than we think. But, for the average Joey, who's going to grow up to work construction or be a mechanic, why fill his head with nonsense like the latin root of hygeine?
So, let's face it: if you want your kid to be intellectual, you are going to have to teach him/her yourself. That's good. That gives you a choice in the matter. But make sure you let him know that most of the kids in Public school are going to be automatons, american robots, and that he will one day be their boss.
Cheers.
I think lawyers (as well as computer scientists) are simply guilty of creating the system which they work with. Lawyers created the legal system in such a way to require lawyers. Computer scientists have created computer systems to require computer scientists. It's classic self-validation, self-preservation, self-ishness that drives the capitalist USSA.
I think it's wonderful, because you create your own job. I just wish I knew more about law, because that is the fastest growing self-perpetuating system and is probably going to be a VERY good business to be in (it already is).
Lawyers will tell you (and rightfully so) that as the world gets more complex, and the world population grows larger, the possibility of dispute increases accordingly. Of course, they neglect to mention the fact that they are the major cause of dispute..
But, really, it's amazing that 6 or 7 billion people can all pretty much get along on one planet, and really, unfair stuff doesn't happen all that often. But, to remain on topic, it is pretty funny when a system we setup to be foolproof ends up making a fool of us all.
I think this should be a lesson to all the judges out there: they need to take much more into consideration than just a patent application. And they do. If only they couldn't be bribed.
for putting Win98 on this machine..
I am using Windows 98 for this machine as I don't need anything more than that.
Wonder how long it will be before he adds another button programmed with "Ctrl-Alt-Del"..
Welcome to the world, mate. Every large corporation has mafia at the head. GE, Walmart.. Hell, Jack Valenti (head of RIAA) sounds pretty fucking italian.
The parent post makes a very good point. And how hard would it be, once the RIAA threatened action, to simply make the server "disappear?" In Court: "What? We didn't have a server. Prove that there's a server."
This whole "story" smells to high heaven. I bet this is just a publicity stunt by the RIAA.
NOBODY just gives some organization 1 million bucks, no matter how threatened they are.
I bet the RIAA handed them 1M and said, "hey, we're going to bust you, then you publically give us the 1M. in return, we will publically show how grateful we are by using your digital rights management product."
Please people, this isn't a story. This is a publicity stunt. 1 million is chump change, anyway.
Someone has to say the dorky, "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these." I guess it'll be me.
Actually, to really understand what everyone means by "time travel" you have to understand time itself. "time" as humans know it, is simply a uniform and repeated measurement of change.
The change, of course, is the increase of "entropy" or "chaos" in the universe. Time travel requires that you somehow hold the traveling object still (0 degress kelvin) while somehow reversing every interaction in the universe (or maybe a local area) and then starting the mix up again.
It has been shown that there are "impressions" made by small subatomic particles as they travel forward in "Time" (ie they progress toward chaos) that travel backwards in time (towards order).
Of course, this may just be an artifact of using symbolic math as a model.
Then again, there is no real world, there is no spoon. There are only individual human experiences.
Maybe, he already has...