The American people are pretty radical? We don't accept authority as proof for a claim?
Sweet God.
We are, actually, a very reactionary, conservative country, and we tend to do things simply because someone tells us to (see the Milgram study for an example). A land of churches, right?
It sounds like you need to talk to some Europeans, or at the very least see what other countries are like before assuming we're a bunch of progressive radicals with the human race's best interests at heart. Seriously.
And fetishization of property only suits those with property, which may explain why I'm not as enchanted with the notion of sacred property as you seem to be.
I can't really summon up any feeling this election. The only feeling I have right now is disgust at this whole entire process from the ground up and including every single person here.
Bleagh.
Sure I'll vote, but it's like balancing your checkbook during church - no sense of power where there should be. No issues have been brought up (by anyone except Nader) during the campaign that I honestly care about. Social Security? I'm 19 - that'll be long gone by the time I get there. Perscriptions for seniors? Fuck the old people! My county has a shortage of housing for ppl who make less than $30k a year, and 6 new retirement plazas are being built. School vouchers? It's not college they're talking about, that's for sure.
The only thing worse than listening to campaign rhetoric is listening to people with opinions put them forth (x is best, blah blah blah). Bleagh.
If only there was a reboot switch for America. Consider me marginalized.
I don't care much about the actual topic you're mumbling about, but horrible arguments irritate me.
Yes, car crashes result in a greater number of deaths, but that says nothing about the relative morality rates. Until you know how many deaths there are per car crash, taking into account the possibility for multiple passengers in cars, you cannot even begin to make an accurate statement about which is deadlier.
Also, head-on collisions do not always result in the drivers head leaving a "bright red splat" on the windshield. If the driver is wearing a seatbelt and driving a car with airbags, they'll usually be bruised but intact. Motorcycles and bicycles lack the stability, mass, and enclosure of a car, and so head-on collisions usually result in the driver being flung over the handlebars, hence the need for a helmet.
We don't mandate helmet laws for cars because cars already have mandated safety equipment: seat belts, airbags, impact tests, safety glass, et al. Motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards, and rollerblades don't have these safety measures, and so helments are necessary.
Helmet advocates are obviously concerned with safety. Your fallacious logic can be equated with the statement "People fighting hunger aren't giving me food, and I'm hungry, so therefore they're not really interested in feeding people." I'm sure there's a fancy Latin name for this type of logical error, but the best English phrase for it is "bullshit." If you suspect alterior motives for their apparently altrustic desire to save lives, name them.
If you don't want to wear a helment for aesthetic, political, or spiritual reasons, fine. Just don't attempt to justify it because something else people do is dangerous as well.
Leave it to hackers...
on
Date Pagers
·
· Score: 5
...to totally overlook the possibilities:
You walk into a pub and spot a total cutie. You bring out your hacked DatePager, point it at hers/his, and WHOAH... all of a sudden her/his DatePager goes off, identifying your sexy self as being a perfect match.
Rather than pirate the music, start lobbying for labels to sell individual mp3's. Do something useful other than just bitch about how you're the victim. Civil disobedience is a valid and moral response to unjust laws. How else can a disenfranchised group fight a huge power?
Unless, of course, you have some special reason why you get to choose which laws to obey. I choose which laws I obey based on whether or not I think those laws are just. I will not cede my moral judgement to someone I do not trust, nor will I blindly follow a government with a dubious (at best) moral standing.
Almost all of the arguments against GUIs that I've read here rest on the fact that GUIs and flexibility are somehow mutually exclusive. I don't think that's necessarily true. It's easy to point at Windows and say that GUIs are inflexible, but that's overlooking the underlying truth: Windows is inflexible; why should the GUI be any different?
Why not make a GUI that's a tutorial as well? Why not make a scalable GUI? Instead of assuming that the current UI metaphors are the alpha and omega, why not investigate new and alien UIs?
Why not have a configuration tool that uses plugins? That way the poor config authors wouldn't have to be responsible for keeping up to date with all the config file changes.
Why not have each plugin include a paragraph for each option explaining how to set that in the raw config files?
Giving something a GUI frontend is not the same thing as making it Windows. Let's get some ideas out here instead of the same old cantankerous crap.
CAST, a cryptographic algorithm is patented. So is IDEA. So is RSA. So was Diffie-Hellman. So was Lucifer. So were knapsack ciphers. MISTY1, certain implementations of elliptic curve crypto, FEAL, REDOC, REDOC II, Khufu, Khafre, CA-1.1, RC5, RC6 (?), Pohlig-Hellman, DSA, ESIGN, Fiat-Shamir, Schnorr, EKE, and *many* *many* other cryptographic algorithms have or have had patents.
This isn't some recent development, as the RSA patent was obtained in 1983.
If someone comes up with a new and innovative process for doing something, by all means, let them patent it. That's what it's there for.
RSA (the three guys) came up with a process by which people could communicate securely. Yes, it involves math. So? You could say that the KegHead could be expressed mathematically, but does that mean it's a mathematical formula? Say I take simple addition and come up with some ground-breaking new way to open cans. Is that a mathematical formula?
I don't see how you can say you shouldn't be able to patent algorithms. Algorithms are processes, and why can't you patent a process?
On a side note, this is *way* old news. Google has had a "patent pending" sign on it since I first knew about it.
I'm getting sick of hearing people froth at the mouth over this.
"But they're suing over a blah blah blah," you're gonna say. Yes, they are. But who are they suing? Barnes & Noble.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes, and I agree. I don't like Barnes & Noble, and here's why:
They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.
"Yes," you're gonna say, "but if Amazon wins, then they can sue anyone over this with precedent."
But why would they? B&N is a direct competitor and tried to buy out Amazon.com's main supplier. Amazon would have filed suit against B&N for *anything*. Yes, this is a stupid lawsuit, and it's a stupid patent, and all the rest. Fix the sickness, not the symptoms: reform the Patent Office.
I guess what really bugs me is that everyone's getting themselves worked up into a frenzy over this and not something more important. Patent lawsuits don't kill people, nor do they give people cancer. This is corporate warfare and it doesn't involve individuals.
What's a better topic for us to get riled about? Shit, kids, take your pick:
But no, we have our panties in a twist because big, bad Amazon.com is suing someone over a stupid patent.
I'm willing to boycott them and *all* big companies if an independent company is there to provide the same services with minimal price impact.
So, instead of flaming me and calling me a lackey shill and anal consort of The Man, how about offering solutions? Fatbrain sells most books that I want (ie, all the books I've bought in the past month or so). That's good. Where's a socially-responsible place I can buy CDs from?
See, shopping at Whitey & The Man Bookstore in lieu of Amazon isn't good, it just provides yet another stupid company with incentive to continue their stupid tactics. If you're going to boycott Amazon.com for patent issues, you shouldn't jump in the lap of another fucked up company.
If you really want to fuck over Amazon, use their webpage to pick out books (based on user reviews, etc.), then buy the books at SociallyResponsibleBookstore.com. You get the community and the karma. Woo hoo.
So... what non-stupid online CD stores are there?
[BTW, I haven't read *any* comments offering alternatives to Amazon. You're never going to get a boycott to work if you don't offer alternatives.]
Today was the last day of my Ethics class, and the topic of discussion was the ethics of technology. And boy, lemme tell ya, it ain't always fun being the smart-ass programmer guy with opinions. Turns out it was me and the cute girl who doesn't say much vs. the rest of the class. Real fun. The discussion on abortion was far less heated.
As a devout agnostic, I consider God to be the unknowable. No just what's over the next hill, but the Mystery itself. That being said, I think it's way too easy for people to say "that's God's business," as if the Bible contains a job discription and mission statement.
As far as the social implications go, the wish for slower technological growth is just that: a wish. People will continue to pry apart the nuts and bolts of the universe, and the people who are in charge of the distribution of new technology might as well be moderate to the point of brain death.
I, for one, would rather have Uncle Sam mucking about with genetic technology than some mullah who's reading into the Koran a bit too much (or a devout neo-Orthodox Greek feminist/part-time Marxist rebel, your radical minority here). I'm kinda happy with my bourgeois, liberal, feminist, psuedo-revolutionary, Mountain Dew, whitey, fucknut life. I don't want someone who believes very much in what somebody else told them to kill me, my friends, my family, and sure, even the assholes in the SUVs. No, I don't think the US is peacful, kind, impartial, or even good. But we are very slow to move, and we disagree with ourselves. Who better to have their hand on the trigger than a schizophrenic imperialist with delusions of grandeur and everything to lose?
I'm also not a big fan of the "it's not natural" arguments. Western thought tends to seperate Nature and Man, with disasterous results for Nature. I consider both myself and the keyboard I'm typing on to be natural. It's not like we create matter from a vacuum, right? It's not like we change the laws of physics to help us make things.
Everything you're not equipped with from birth is "unnatural" if you think about it. The "natural" place for a rock is on the ground, not in a human's hand, skinning an antelope. Sticks belong on trees or on the ground, not being used to thresh grain.
As humans, our nature is to fuck with things incessantly. Yes, we run into problems because of this, but it's the way we are. Pandora's box anyone?
Right. My thinkgeek.com order of Penguin caffeinated peppermints just came in, so I'm just a *wee* bit jumpy. Woo!
I think one of your basic assumptions is that an operating system can only interact with a user at one level. Unix's basic UI philosophy is to give the user "enough rope to hang themselves with." Who's to say that the length of rope, if you will, is fixed?
I think that a UI that scales for various user proficiency levels would be great! Those of us who are hackers could dip right down into the nitty gritty, and my mom could have big buttons that pop up when you mouse over them. Is this impossible? No. What happens when the level you're at starts to chafe? You move on to the next one, until you're root. Is this a part of the Big Lie? No, it's unfulfilled potential, and until programmers get their heads out of their asses and start coding for *everyone*, it won't happen. But no, we're complacent and lazy, and we get pissed off when people can't understand how to use the tools we make. We blame the users for not knowing as much as we do. That's bullshit.
To force people to study computer science in order to check their email is like making people ponder the essence of the universe for 10 years before you teach them geometry.
I'll agree with you that computers are being billed as something they're not, but I disagree in your (apparent) solution. You say that no one offers a "Brain Surgery For Dummies" book, but I'd like to add that no one makes a "Learn How To Apply Band-Aids In 21 Days" book, either.
Is email complicated? No. Should people have to resort to traditional media to communicate? No. You don't have to spend years studying great correspondence throughout history to write a letter to Grandma thanking her for the sweater, so why should you have to know the basics of TCP/IP to send her email?
No, rank amateurs will *not* be able to write an Amazon.com clone. That's a fact of life. But most people just want their email, browser, word processor, and instant messager.
The sooner we get past the "damn users need to learn more" bullshit and start teaching the better. I'm doing my part. You do yours.
[ And yes, this is nit-picking, but I've read "literature" and cartoons, and I've found cartoons to have a much better handle on things. I'd take Tom Tomorrow and Berke Breathed over Bronte and Milton. ]
Too often do I hear "Well, they're in the business of making money" as justification for ripping people off. Because you make a buck off of it does *not* mean it's OK to rip off small-time bands.
That said, I think it's surprising that no one's actually fufilled the potential for an online cooperative music label. Instead of paying the bands for the CDs they sell, why not give the bands 85% of mp3 sales and use the 15% to run the site?
You could offer the bands all the marketing info, let them keep the copyright to all their stuff, and then sign the really popular ones with your traditional music label.
According to the article, there'd be a fairly large market for this kind of service. Why sign up with mp3.com when you can sign up with music-coop.com (or whatever) and get a much better deal?
What amazing things you could do if you didn't rip your fellow humans off. But hey... if you're in the business of making money...
This idea, BTW, isn't really mine, nor is it special. If you have the motivation to carry through with it, please do. I've got my own gig going, so I'm not likely to go from programmer to music-industry-guerilla.
The problem with this was posed in Neal Stephenson's _Diamond_Age_ (I think it was that, at least.)
Let's say you have a clock overlaid on your vision. You upgrade the firmware in the chip, and OH SHIT... you now have HOT PINK TEENAGE CUM SLUTS superimposed over your vision.
Now *that* could drive someone to suicide.
It's also a good reason why bionic implants should run Linux. You don't want the latest Outlook 2050 exploit to result in your arm trying to strangle you.
Also, it means that if part of the Borg disagrees with another part, the Borg can fork...
"I am Hemos of OpenBorg..." "I am CmdrTaco of FreeBorg..."
I would assume that the structures used to process visual data would either not be present in his brain, or if they were they'd be completely underused.
The brain, marvel that it is, can adapt like mad, and there's a wealth of stories in which someone gained sight when they were born blind.
At first, they're totally disoriented, since their brain hasn't the slightest clue how to process the data being thrown at it. With training and time, the brain works things out, and the person can see. After a while they see fine, as the brain adapts.
Being blind then regaining your sight doesn't mean your sight will always be screwed up. It just means there's one hell of a transitional period.
You're complaining about the difference between quantitative and qualitative here.
The failure rate of Fujitsu drives is a number. 3/100ths, let's say, with a +-2% margin of error.
Whether "Thunder In Paradise" was a good movie is not a number.
This isn't a double-standard as much as it is two totally different standards. I would take your *opinion* on Fujitsu drives in the same way I'd take a review written by someone I didn't know: with a grain of salt.
Because I live in a house you built does not mean that you get to want what I do in it.
If they provided the content, then yes, they would have a right to see who accesses it. They don't provide the content, however, they provide the music player/manager.
Stop reading Wired: the global economy doesn't help people. It helps corporations, who hold no real allegiance to actual human beings.
Does the fact that PepsiCo's stock is high make your life any better?
Has quality of life improved?
Are your wages increasing at the same rate as your cost of living?
The "Big Boom" has resulted in mass inequality of condition.
This is okay? This is good? Neglect and exploitation of the Third World to keep us where we are is justified?
Don't get me wrong, the technology by itself is not evil. It's neat, it's entertaining.
But does ICQ help starving people? Does HTML 4.0 solve civil war? Do microkernels help the hole in the ozone layer?
When we wax poetic about how decentralized network theory can be applied to society at large, let's not forget that there are problems out there. The world sucks right now. 25% of American women will be raped at least once in their life. Corporate profit margins are going up as loyalty to employees goes down. We still drive cars. There's 6 billion of us now. Money hasn't helped anything.
It's easy to put this aside and ignore it. It's not fun to think about, but we need to nonetheless.
I'm not blaming the Internet Boom for this, either. If we weren't checking out the latest build of Mozilla (lookin' good, guys!), we'd be doing something else of equal or lesser import.
Post-Hartman is kinda strained, but when they had it going... hoo boy.
And while some people trumpet the "90% of everything is crap" motto, I have to mention that not all crap grinds down peoples' sense of self-worth in order to sell them things.
Bad fiction, for example, is just repellant. You think to yourself "Wow, this guy can't write for shit," put it down, and get on with reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias trilogy (GREAT READING).
MTV's fashion hour, however, is a finely-tuned psychological tool created for the sole purpose of making you feel fat and ugly and in need of swimsuits, makeup, and crap like that.
So while 90% of everything is crap, not everything is malicious crap. That distinction needs to be made.
As a programmer interesting in creative new solutions, I consider myself a hacker. So voila, I'm part of the %5- percent of hackers that have blue hair. Whee. When do I get to be on MTV? I can show off my mad MSG_OOB skills.
And really, there's no point in dying your hair and having a day job. I mean, dyed hair is self-expression, day jobs are (for the most part) prisons.
So quit your job, risk it all, and dye that hair something bright n fun.
Also, if your hair turns green, you should bleach it twice before you do. My hair is El Indestructo, and if I bleach it once it's a really ugly orange, but if you bleach it twice or more it'll come out wonderfully. Be sure and get the kind of bleach with skin conditioner, so your scalp isn't Colonel's Secret Recipie style. You sound trained in the Art Of Making Your Hair Look Weird, so I'm guessing you've tried all this and have accepted that your hair is made out of tightly-bonded buckyballs or something.
Remember kids, punk isn't dead... it's supposed to smell like that.
I run Windows NT (ducks throw vegetables and fruit), and I have the benefit of using (according to PC Week) the only OS which has a centralized patch distribution place.
Yeah. Ok.
So, why isn't this obvious? If it weren't for the Ars Technica NT Tweak site, I wouldn't have known that SP5 was out. Hell, I wouldn't have known about any of the hotfixes currently available. Go centralization.
Speaking of which, MS's "patches" are a joke. The warnings on those things remind me more of quantum mechanics jokes than installation warnings: "Due to an effect called 'tunneling' your computer may blow up after you install this patch, and if it does, that's the will of the cosmos, not any problem on our part."
Makes me feel all warm n fuzzy, like. Especially the fact that I have to reboot after each one, which means 3 patches = 30 minutes.
I have friends who use Debian, and they just slap a key, wait a few minutes, maybe restart a service, and they're done.
Me? I, uh... wait until the fact that I'm using obsolete and insecure software becomes painfully obvious and I have to avoid public shunning by seeking out the latest patches.
I think it's interesting that they point out percieved "flaws" in Linux out while comfortably ignoring similar flaws in NT.
I would *much* rather hear that the world isn't going to end anytime soon than to hear about some physicists mucking about with something that could blow up the Earth.
OTOH, the millennium is coming soon, and I find myself suffixing prophetic sentences with "if Jesus doesn't gate-crash the party, that is." I mean, after all, due to tunneling, Jesus could show up at my New Years bash, and boy would he be ticked.
Jesus and tunneling aside, this whole thing makes me a little nervous. Scientists are the people who have high-energy atom-whackers at their fingertips. What happens if one of them decides "Hell, there's only a %0.00000000002 chance of this blowing up in my face?" Kerzap, there goes humanity.
Not a calming thought. Not a rational thought, for that matter, but still... due to tunneling there's a non-zero chance of a physicist...
Slashdot Mirror
The American people are pretty radical? We don't accept authority as proof for a claim?
Sweet God.
We are, actually, a very reactionary, conservative country, and we tend to do things simply because someone tells us to (see the Milgram study for an example). A land of churches, right?
It sounds like you need to talk to some Europeans, or at the very least see what other countries are like before assuming we're a bunch of progressive radicals with the human race's best interests at heart. Seriously.
And fetishization of property only suits those with property, which may explain why I'm not as enchanted with the notion of sacred property as you seem to be.
I can't really summon up any feeling this election. The only feeling I have right now is disgust at this whole entire process from the ground up and including every single person here.
Bleagh.
Sure I'll vote, but it's like balancing your checkbook during church - no sense of power where there should be. No issues have been brought up (by anyone except Nader) during the campaign that I honestly care about. Social Security? I'm 19 - that'll be long gone by the time I get there. Perscriptions for seniors? Fuck the old people! My county has a shortage of housing for ppl who make less than $30k a year, and 6 new retirement plazas are being built. School vouchers? It's not college they're talking about, that's for sure.
The only thing worse than listening to campaign rhetoric is listening to people with opinions put them forth (x is best, blah blah blah). Bleagh.
If only there was a reboot switch for America. Consider me marginalized.
I don't care much about the actual topic you're mumbling about, but horrible arguments irritate me.
Yes, car crashes result in a greater number of deaths, but that says nothing about the relative morality rates. Until you know how many deaths there are per car crash, taking into account the possibility for multiple passengers in cars, you cannot even begin to make an accurate statement about which is deadlier.
Also, head-on collisions do not always result in the drivers head leaving a "bright red splat" on the windshield. If the driver is wearing a seatbelt and driving a car with airbags, they'll usually be bruised but intact. Motorcycles and bicycles lack the stability, mass, and enclosure of a car, and so head-on collisions usually result in the driver being flung over the handlebars, hence the need for a helmet.
We don't mandate helmet laws for cars because cars already have mandated safety equipment: seat belts, airbags, impact tests, safety glass, et al. Motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards, and rollerblades don't have these safety measures, and so helments are necessary.
Helmet advocates are obviously concerned with safety. Your fallacious logic can be equated with the statement "People fighting hunger aren't giving me food, and I'm hungry, so therefore they're not really interested in feeding people." I'm sure there's a fancy Latin name for this type of logical error, but the best English phrase for it is "bullshit." If you suspect alterior motives for their apparently altrustic desire to save lives, name them.
If you don't want to wear a helment for aesthetic, political, or spiritual reasons, fine. Just don't attempt to justify it because something else people do is dangerous as well.
...to totally overlook the possibilities:
You walk into a pub and spot a total cutie. You bring out your hacked DatePager, point it at hers/his, and WHOAH... all of a sudden her/his DatePager goes off, identifying your sexy self as being a perfect match.
Dishonest, yes, but all's fair in love and war.
Rather than pirate the music, start lobbying for labels to sell individual mp3's. Do something useful other than just bitch about how you're the victim.
Civil disobedience is a valid and moral response to unjust laws. How else can a disenfranchised group fight a huge power?
Unless, of course, you have some special reason why you get to choose which laws to obey.
I choose which laws I obey based on whether or not I think those laws are just. I will not cede my moral judgement to someone I do not trust, nor will I blindly follow a government with a dubious (at best) moral standing.
There is a higher law than the law of the state.
How about the hundreds of thousands of people killed, raped, and tourtured by US-funded, fascist death squads in South America?
IIRC, they were killed for their Marxist (or "leftist") views.
Marxists don't have a monopoly on brutality.
"Take any product P*Q = N(P and Q both prime)
This is always true:
(N+1) MOD 6 == 0 or
(N-1) MOD 6 == 0"
P = 13
Q = 67
N = 13 * 67 = 817
(N - 1) mod 6 = 816 mod 6 = 0
(N + 1) mod 6 = 818 mod 6 = 2
Uh oh. Back to the drawing board.
I didn't, BTW, make a Perl script to check this, nor did I intuit this counterexample. I just chose the first two prime numbers I could think of.
Almost all of the arguments against GUIs that I've read here rest on the fact that GUIs and flexibility are somehow mutually exclusive. I don't think that's necessarily true. It's easy to point at Windows and say that GUIs are inflexible, but that's overlooking the underlying truth: Windows is inflexible; why should the GUI be any different?
Why not make a GUI that's a tutorial as well? Why not make a scalable GUI? Instead of assuming that the current UI metaphors are the alpha and omega, why not investigate new and alien UIs?
Why not have a configuration tool that uses plugins? That way the poor config authors wouldn't have to be responsible for keeping up to date with all the config file changes.
Why not have each plugin include a paragraph for each option explaining how to set that in the raw config files?
Giving something a GUI frontend is not the same thing as making it Windows. Let's get some ideas out here instead of the same old cantankerous crap.
What on earth are you smoking?
CAST, a cryptographic algorithm is patented.
So is IDEA.
So is RSA.
So was Diffie-Hellman.
So was Lucifer.
So were knapsack ciphers.
MISTY1, certain implementations of elliptic curve crypto, FEAL, REDOC, REDOC II, Khufu, Khafre, CA-1.1, RC5, RC6 (?), Pohlig-Hellman, DSA, ESIGN, Fiat-Shamir, Schnorr, EKE, and *many* *many* other cryptographic algorithms have or have had patents.
This isn't some recent development, as the RSA patent was obtained in 1983.
If someone comes up with a new and innovative process for doing something, by all means, let them patent it. That's what it's there for.
RSA (the three guys) came up with a process by which people could communicate securely. Yes, it involves math. So? You could say that the KegHead could be expressed mathematically, but does that mean it's a mathematical formula? Say I take simple addition and come up with some ground-breaking new way to open cans. Is that a mathematical formula?
I don't see how you can say you shouldn't be able to patent algorithms. Algorithms are processes, and why can't you patent a process?
On a side note, this is *way* old news. Google has had a "patent pending" sign on it since I first knew about it.
"But they're suing over a blah blah blah," you're gonna say. Yes, they are. But who are they suing? Barnes & Noble.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes, and I agree. I don't like Barnes & Noble, and here's why:
- They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
- The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
- B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.
"Yes," you're gonna say, "but if Amazon wins, then they can sue anyone over this with precedent."But why would they? B&N is a direct competitor and tried to buy out Amazon.com's main supplier. Amazon would have filed suit against B&N for *anything*. Yes, this is a stupid lawsuit, and it's a stupid patent, and all the rest. Fix the sickness, not the symptoms: reform the Patent Office.
I guess what really bugs me is that everyone's getting themselves worked up into a frenzy over this and not something more important. Patent lawsuits don't kill people, nor do they give people cancer. This is corporate warfare and it doesn't involve individuals.
What's a better topic for us to get riled about? Shit, kids, take your pick:
- US Companies selling defective products overseas
- Mobil Oil involved in Indonesian massacres
- 4,000 babies die every day due to being bottle-fed, thanks to companies like Nestle
But no, we have our panties in a twist because big, bad Amazon.com is suing someone over a stupid patent.I'm willing to boycott them and *all* big companies if an independent company is there to provide the same services with minimal price impact.
So, instead of flaming me and calling me a lackey shill and anal consort of The Man, how about offering solutions? Fatbrain sells most books that I want (ie, all the books I've bought in the past month or so). That's good. Where's a socially-responsible place I can buy CDs from?
See, shopping at Whitey & The Man Bookstore in lieu of Amazon isn't good, it just provides yet another stupid company with incentive to continue their stupid tactics. If you're going to boycott Amazon.com for patent issues, you shouldn't jump in the lap of another fucked up company.
If you really want to fuck over Amazon, use their webpage to pick out books (based on user reviews, etc.), then buy the books at SociallyResponsibleBookstore.com. You get the community and the karma. Woo hoo.
So... what non-stupid online CD stores are there?
[BTW, I haven't read *any* comments offering alternatives to Amazon. You're never going to get a boycott to work if you don't offer alternatives.]
Today was the last day of my Ethics class, and the topic of discussion was the ethics of technology. And boy, lemme tell ya, it ain't always fun being the smart-ass programmer guy with opinions. Turns out it was me and the cute girl who doesn't say much vs. the rest of the class. Real fun. The discussion on abortion was far less heated.
As a devout agnostic, I consider God to be the unknowable. No just what's over the next hill, but the Mystery itself. That being said, I think it's way too easy for people to say "that's God's business," as if the Bible contains a job discription and mission statement.
As far as the social implications go, the wish for slower technological growth is just that: a wish. People will continue to pry apart the nuts and bolts of the universe, and the people who are in charge of the distribution of new technology might as well be moderate to the point of brain death.
I, for one, would rather have Uncle Sam mucking about with genetic technology than some mullah who's reading into the Koran a bit too much (or a devout neo-Orthodox Greek feminist/part-time Marxist rebel, your radical minority here). I'm kinda happy with my bourgeois, liberal, feminist, psuedo-revolutionary, Mountain Dew, whitey, fucknut life. I don't want someone who believes very much in what somebody else told them to kill me, my friends, my family, and sure, even the assholes in the SUVs. No, I don't think the US is peacful, kind, impartial, or even good. But we are very slow to move, and we disagree with ourselves. Who better to have their hand on the trigger than a schizophrenic imperialist with delusions of grandeur and everything to lose?
I'm also not a big fan of the "it's not natural" arguments. Western thought tends to seperate Nature and Man, with disasterous results for Nature. I consider both myself and the keyboard I'm typing on to be natural. It's not like we create matter from a vacuum, right? It's not like we change the laws of physics to help us make things.
Everything you're not equipped with from birth is "unnatural" if you think about it. The "natural" place for a rock is on the ground, not in a human's hand, skinning an antelope. Sticks belong on trees or on the ground, not being used to thresh grain.
As humans, our nature is to fuck with things incessantly. Yes, we run into problems because of this, but it's the way we are. Pandora's box anyone?
Right. My thinkgeek.com order of Penguin caffeinated peppermints just came in, so I'm just a *wee* bit jumpy. Woo!
Is it too damn hard to read the fucking article?
Can't we look at the picture and see what it looks like?
But no... we have to gibber on about how you could paint a Caddy black and put lasers on it and foil cops who have running engines. BLAH BLAH BLAH.
READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE POSTING. YOUR IGNORANCE DOESN'T HELP ANYONE.
I think one of your basic assumptions is that an operating system can only interact with a user at one level. Unix's basic UI philosophy is to give the user "enough rope to hang themselves with." Who's to say that the length of rope, if you will, is fixed?
I think that a UI that scales for various user proficiency levels would be great! Those of us who are hackers could dip right down into the nitty gritty, and my mom could have big buttons that pop up when you mouse over them. Is this impossible? No. What happens when the level you're at starts to chafe? You move on to the next one, until you're root. Is this a part of the Big Lie? No, it's unfulfilled potential, and until programmers get their heads out of their asses and start coding for *everyone*, it won't happen. But no, we're complacent and lazy, and we get pissed off when people can't understand how to use the tools we make. We blame the users for not knowing as much as we do. That's bullshit.
To force people to study computer science in order to check their email is like making people ponder the essence of the universe for 10 years before you teach them geometry.
I'll agree with you that computers are being billed as something they're not, but I disagree in your (apparent) solution. You say that no one offers a "Brain Surgery For Dummies" book, but I'd like to add that no one makes a "Learn How To Apply Band-Aids In 21 Days" book, either.
Is email complicated? No. Should people have to resort to traditional media to communicate? No. You don't have to spend years studying great correspondence throughout history to write a letter to Grandma thanking her for the sweater, so why should you have to know the basics of TCP/IP to send her email?
No, rank amateurs will *not* be able to write an Amazon.com clone. That's a fact of life. But most people just want their email, browser, word processor, and instant messager.
The sooner we get past the "damn users need to learn more" bullshit and start teaching the better. I'm doing my part. You do yours.
[ And yes, this is nit-picking, but I've read "literature" and cartoons, and I've found cartoons to have a much better handle on things. I'd take Tom Tomorrow and Berke Breathed over Bronte and Milton. ]
And this is OK?
Too often do I hear "Well, they're in the business of making money" as justification for ripping people off. Because you make a buck off of it does *not* mean it's OK to rip off small-time bands.
That said, I think it's surprising that no one's actually fufilled the potential for an online cooperative music label. Instead of paying the bands for the CDs they sell, why not give the bands 85% of mp3 sales and use the 15% to run the site?
You could offer the bands all the marketing info, let them keep the copyright to all their stuff, and then sign the really popular ones with your traditional music label.
According to the article, there'd be a fairly large market for this kind of service. Why sign up with mp3.com when you can sign up with music-coop.com (or whatever) and get a much better deal?
What amazing things you could do if you didn't rip your fellow humans off. But hey... if you're in the business of making money...
This idea, BTW, isn't really mine, nor is it special. If you have the motivation to carry through with it, please do. I've got my own gig going, so I'm not likely to go from programmer to music-industry-guerilla.
The problem with this was posed in Neal Stephenson's _Diamond_Age_ (I think it was that, at least.)
Let's say you have a clock overlaid on your vision. You upgrade the firmware in the chip, and OH SHIT... you now have HOT PINK TEENAGE CUM SLUTS superimposed over your vision.
Now *that* could drive someone to suicide.
It's also a good reason why bionic implants should run Linux. You don't want the latest Outlook 2050 exploit to result in your arm trying to strangle you.
Also, it means that if part of the Borg disagrees with another part, the Borg can fork...
"I am Hemos of OpenBorg..."
"I am CmdrTaco of FreeBorg..."
Woo!
I would assume that the structures used to process visual data would either not be present in his brain, or if they were they'd be completely underused.
The brain, marvel that it is, can adapt like mad, and there's a wealth of stories in which someone gained sight when they were born blind.
At first, they're totally disoriented, since their brain hasn't the slightest clue how to process the data being thrown at it. With training and time, the brain works things out, and the person can see. After a while they see fine, as the brain adapts.
Being blind then regaining your sight doesn't mean your sight will always be screwed up. It just means there's one hell of a transitional period.
You're complaining about the difference between quantitative and qualitative here.
The failure rate of Fujitsu drives is a number. 3/100ths, let's say, with a +-2% margin of error.
Whether "Thunder In Paradise" was a good movie is not a number.
This isn't a double-standard as much as it is two totally different standards. I would take your *opinion* on Fujitsu drives in the same way I'd take a review written by someone I didn't know: with a grain of salt.
Because I live in a house you built does not mean that you get to want what I do in it.
This should read "Because I live in a house you built does not mean to get to monitor what I do in it."
Remember kids, sleep and/or the Preview button are your friends...
No, I see this as a violation of privacy.
Because I live in a house you built does not mean that you get to want what I do in it.
If they provided the content, then yes, they would have a right to see who accesses it. They don't provide the content, however, they provide the music player/manager.
This site has the rate at 18%.
This one has it at 33%.
Another says 35% of women are sexually abused as children.
This one (currently down, check Google cache) gives the magic 25%, listing Mary Koss, et al., A Criminalogical Study, 1990 as the reference.
HealthCentral says 50+% of women have been physically assaulted and 1 in 5 raped, citing the HHS/DoJ survey from the first link.
So... not just a concoction of my imagination, not just more bullshit to prop up my thesis... sadly, it's true.
Stop reading Wired: the global economy doesn't help people. It helps corporations, who hold no real allegiance to actual human beings.
Does the fact that PepsiCo's stock is high make your life any better?
Has quality of life improved?
Are your wages increasing at the same rate as your cost of living?
The "Big Boom" has resulted in mass inequality of condition.
This is okay? This is good? Neglect and exploitation of the Third World to keep us where we are is justified?
Don't get me wrong, the technology by itself is not evil. It's neat, it's entertaining.
But does ICQ help starving people? Does HTML 4.0 solve civil war? Do microkernels help the hole in the ozone layer?
When we wax poetic about how decentralized network theory can be applied to society at large, let's not forget that there are problems out there. The world sucks right now. 25% of American women will be raped at least once in their life. Corporate profit margins are going up as loyalty to employees goes down. We still drive cars. There's 6 billion of us now. Money hasn't helped anything.
It's easy to put this aside and ignore it. It's not fun to think about, but we need to nonetheless.
I'm not blaming the Internet Boom for this, either. If we weren't checking out the latest build of Mozilla (lookin' good, guys!), we'd be doing something else of equal or lesser import.
*sigh*
As does Hartman-era News Radio.
Post-Hartman is kinda strained, but when they had it going... hoo boy.
And while some people trumpet the "90% of everything is crap" motto, I have to mention that not all crap grinds down peoples' sense of self-worth in order to sell them things.
Bad fiction, for example, is just repellant. You think to yourself "Wow, this guy can't write for shit," put it down, and get on with reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias trilogy (GREAT READING).
MTV's fashion hour, however, is a finely-tuned psychological tool created for the sole purpose of making you feel fat and ugly and in need of swimsuits, makeup, and crap like that.
So while 90% of everything is crap, not everything is malicious crap. That distinction needs to be made.
Heh... I have blue hair. Bright blue hair.
As a programmer interesting in creative new solutions, I consider myself a hacker. So voila, I'm part of the %5- percent of hackers that have blue hair. Whee. When do I get to be on MTV? I can show off my mad MSG_OOB skills.
And really, there's no point in dying your hair and having a day job. I mean, dyed hair is self-expression, day jobs are (for the most part) prisons.
So quit your job, risk it all, and dye that hair something bright n fun.
Also, if your hair turns green, you should bleach it twice before you do. My hair is El Indestructo, and if I bleach it once it's a really ugly orange, but if you bleach it twice or more it'll come out wonderfully. Be sure and get the kind of bleach with skin conditioner, so your scalp isn't Colonel's Secret Recipie style. You sound trained in the Art Of Making Your Hair Look Weird, so I'm guessing you've tried all this and have accepted that your hair is made out of tightly-bonded buckyballs or something.
Remember kids, punk isn't dead... it's supposed to smell like that.
I run Windows NT (ducks throw vegetables and fruit), and I have the benefit of using (according to PC Week) the only OS which has a centralized patch distribution place.
Yeah. Ok.
So, why isn't this obvious? If it weren't for the Ars Technica NT Tweak site, I wouldn't have known that SP5 was out. Hell, I wouldn't have known about any of the hotfixes currently available. Go centralization.
Speaking of which, MS's "patches" are a joke. The warnings on those things remind me more of quantum mechanics jokes than installation warnings: "Due to an effect called 'tunneling' your computer may blow up after you install this patch, and if it does, that's the will of the cosmos, not any problem on our part."
Makes me feel all warm n fuzzy, like. Especially the fact that I have to reboot after each one, which means 3 patches = 30 minutes.
I have friends who use Debian, and they just slap a key, wait a few minutes, maybe restart a service, and they're done.
Me? I, uh... wait until the fact that I'm using obsolete and insecure software becomes painfully obvious and I have to avoid public shunning by seeking out the latest patches.
I think it's interesting that they point out percieved "flaws" in Linux out while comfortably ignoring similar flaws in NT.
God, I love objective journalism...
I would *much* rather hear that the world isn't going to end anytime soon than to hear about some physicists mucking about with something that could blow up the Earth.
OTOH, the millennium is coming soon, and I find myself suffixing prophetic sentences with "if Jesus doesn't gate-crash the party, that is." I mean, after all, due to tunneling, Jesus could show up at my New Years bash, and boy would he be ticked.
Jesus and tunneling aside, this whole thing makes me a little nervous. Scientists are the people who have high-energy atom-whackers at their fingertips. What happens if one of them decides "Hell, there's only a %0.00000000002 chance of this blowing up in my face?" Kerzap, there goes humanity.
Not a calming thought. Not a rational thought, for that matter, but still... due to tunneling there's a non-zero chance of a physicist...