The tricky part is to get him under oath. He's not been there before. That's the lesson he learned from Clinton. Don't go under oath. He has lied all the way through his presidency, but not once has he been put under oath. Luckily, for a president, lying is expected behaviour, and the populace will accept any lie from any government official, as long as its not under oath. Lies are okay, as long as its not under oath. Because, you know, oaths are serious shit, and you shouldn't lie under them.
That's the fallout of five years ago. Then the left vote was so splintered, that fascist Le Pen came into the second round. Needless to say, the general populace was so appalled by the prospect of having Le Pen as president that unpopular Chirac won with a whopping 85% of the vote. There are definite good points in the French system though. It consists of rounds. First round contains all candidates. If no one gets a majority, all but the top two runners are eliminated. Then a second round is held. The winner of that becomes president. If I recall correctly, if the difference between the two is less than a few percent, another round will be held.
Given that the last few elections in the US haven't produced a president that had a majority of the votes behind him (note, even winning the popular vote doesn't guarantee that more than 50% of the population approve of the president), it's at least better than the US way. At the very least it gets for a large part rid of the 'outsider distraction' problem in the final rounds. But then again, the US seems more interested in having the decision made before January 15th than on the nature of the decision itself, so I doubt it'll fly.
The monarchy I live in is run by elected representatives of the populace, not by the populace itself.
Care to explain how my queen is the head of state of a republic?
representative democracies, tell
Well, if political US was bound by its own borders you might have a point. Meanwhile, in the real world, the US is trying to run the show and the far-right nature of US politics (both Rep and Dem) is rightly questioned by many. Yes military, you're unbeatable at this point. Economically, you're a falling giant. As for never going to listen, this is my prediction:
2012: the year the People's Republic of China recaptures the Island of Taipei. US stands by and watches after the Chinese kindly pointed out that dumping their dollar reserves on the open market would utterly annihilate the US economy. US is considering to grow corn and movies for their new Chinese overlords.
A nerd is interested in technology, surrounds himself with gadgets and is socially inept. A geek is the same, only difference is that a geek likes being like that.
It benefits you because it benefits the syndicate. Everyone is part of the syndicate, including you. What's good for the syndicate is good for you. That's why we can sell 13 cent eggs for 5 cents and make a profit. Wanna try chocolate covered cotton?
It stamps down on piracy. Piracy is bad, as it hurts profit. More profit means more income for government from corporations (*cough*). More income for government means lower taxes for individuals (*cough**cough*). You see, this bill will lower the tax-rate.
To re-iterate the GP, patents are not there to protect ideas, but inventions. Patent law explicitly forbids the patenting of ideas, even though the USPTO seems to ignore the law (viz. one-click patent). As for ownership of ideas, try to think this one through. If one can patent ideas, any random thought can be owned. So I can patent time-travel, more fuel-efficient cars than currently exist, mi's next twenty comments on slashdot, the cure for cancer, etc., etc. As I would own these ideas, anybody that actually invents one of these should pay me money, as the ideas are rightfully mine.
Afghanistan: given that every tribe that falls outside of the current set of tribes that are in power seem to be called 'Taliban' in western media, combined with the fact that the US has finally pushed through the destruction of the main source of income of 90% of these tribes (opium) without being able to provide an alternate means of existence, it is safe to say that the western coalition in Afghanistan is in deep shit and will get kicked out of the goddamned country by the 'Taliban' sooner than later.
Yet another fuckup by the US, basing politics on ideology rather than reality.
So, a democracy is ruled by the populace, and the US is not a democracy, but a republic. So, pretty coward and stupid moderator who modded this insightful, tell me: who's supposed to run the US?
Wow, how fucked up can you become? You shouldn't have partisans in charge of elections, you should have neutrals there. You know, people that care about your constitution and the proper running of the state, not people whose career depends on the outcome! If these aren't around, well then, maybe you should throw in the towel and declare this democracy experiment a failure. You're obviously not ready for it yet.
I have serious doubts that companies in the pharmaceutical industry would have any hope of being profitable without being able to enforce patents. No profitability would simply mean that these companies wouldn't exist...
The big question of course is: would it destroy the pharmaceuticals? Even without patents there still is a market worth trillions of dollars for drugs. This demand will be filled somehow, that's inevitable. Save for government institutes, pharmaceuticals are the only entities large enough to be able to hold the necessary clinical trials for new drugs to get adopted. Will new drugs and treatments stop being researched? Given that very wealthy and also a much larger and therefore more important group of well-to-do people are not very inclined to simply whither off and die when they're ill, I'm pretty sure that some form of economic incentive would be found very quickly to reward research into important diseases. This will most likely take the form of billion dollar foundations that sponsor research in particular areas.
With the absence of patent law, the results of such research would be available for all (including developing countries). Note that in many cases, drug research is a question of life and death for the ill. They'll pay to develop a cure, and as long as it doesn't make sense to take your money into your grave, you can be sure about that fact.
And as usual it is argued that because 'The land of the free' is not worse than some random dictatorship, we should not criticize the 'moral leaders of the world'. Bah, pathetic.
So, we turn to section 6. Section 6 has a few options for distributing your work. For static linking you basically need to enable your user to (a) modify the LGPL'd based stuff (for which you have to provide source), and (b) relink it with your application (for which you do not need to provide source). You thus only need to make the object code available to enable the re-linking. This is far from opening up the source. Other scenarios including shared linking are explored as well, but the total picture is simply that you are wrong. LGPL'd stuff does not force you to give up the source code when statically linked: you just have to make sure that your users can relink in whatever way (you can do it for them).
I've been in science for a while, and it's startling to discover how many non obvious things are independently invented. Take for instance backpropagation for neural networks. This was independently invented by Rumelhart & Mc.Lelland, Werbos, Hinton, and some others. After years of reflection on this invention, consensus now is that it actually Newton who was first. Evolutionary computation was independently invented by people in the fifties, sixties, seventies until finally it gained mainstream traction in the eighties. I personally have discovered many things that I later discovered to be concurrently developed. I.e., it was unknown when I worked with it, only later papers came out on the exact subject I've been studying, coming up with the same solution I converged on. Next to this, I've been doing lots of commercial research, in which we didn't disclose, and found out later that although academia never published on it, people in other commercial enterprises developed essentially the same thing, simply because the problem was there. All this stuff was non obvious, there was no prior art, and many people came independently to the same conclusion. If any of this stuff was patented, many bright people would have been cut off from using their own innovations.
Many more examples exist, and it really questions the assumption on granting patents that the stuff patented would be undisclosed without such patents. As far as I can see, it's an arbitrary payoff to the first guy that bothers to patent things, and cuts off innovation in that area until the patent expires. Given that the fundamental assumption underlying patents is false in this day and age where a multitude of people are studying any part of science, the question should be asked if the patent system actually serves a purpose still.
As Elladan is saying in a sibling post: the USPTO is batshit insane. Though actually they aren't. The USPTO forms a racketeering scheme: the only way you can keep out of their claws is by paying them off, i.e., applying for patents yourself. This will only give you very limited protection, but that's all you're going to get. The USPTO has 'customers', like Verizon, which pay them money to rubberstamp their patents. The fallout, like killing companies such as Vonage, is for the economy to swallow. It'll destroy the US economy at some point in time, and all we can do is point and giggle.
I wouldn't let my kids watch hack-n-slash horror films simply because I know it would terrify them. Hell, some of the stuff out there even scares me. If they would not be terrified by such films, no problem with that. It's a bit different with a game though, because you're more in control than with a movie. Chances are that it is less terrifying and more exhilarating. I have no problem with that. If they're scared by the game, they can quit, or maybe I can take over.
My daughter, when she was four, was really frightened by a game in which Pooh-bear could hurt himself on a blueberry bush in a game. I had to take over play for a few months, because she couldn't handle the suspension. Should we ban Pooh-bear now?
The real big idea behind anti-trust law is that monopolies are bad, and everything should be done to prevent someone simply buying one. If it grows on its own strength, not much to be done about it. However, if a monopoly gets bought, government (historically US, currently only the EU), will try to prevent it. Remember GE-Honeywell merger? Neither were monopolies, though after merging they would practically be one. EU said illegal.
Given that I spend much of my childhood simulating the killing of all of my friends (and they trying to shoot me; an actual frag being a matter of consensus), I don't think video realism is really up to par yet with little kids aiming guns at other little kids. Yes, there's more gore in the video game, but that's only because my mom didn't allow us to smear ourselves with ketchup.
Well, the disappearance of permafrost is threatening all structures build on the Siberian tundras. The Siberians are now slowly seeing their homes sinking, and strangely, they're not shouting with joy over it.
/etc/modules simply contains the name of the modules, the kernel knows at boot time where to find those modules. So no direct need for versioning/etc, unless you would want to use different hardware for different boot configurations.
I still remember the day when someone pointed out Netscape as a replacement for Mosaic. This was as profound an improvement as when someone pointed me to Google as a replacement of Altavista. The initial netscape was a huge improvement over anything out there, and for me, it made the web.
And given that alcohol is on many levels much more addictive and destructive than heroin, you might want to ask yourself: why hasn't our society collapsed under the weight of all those alcohol users? Simple: not all alcohol users destroy themselves. Most people do take care of themselves, albeit not optimally. This will be no different with other drugs.
Indeed, the real Dilbert principle is that people get promoted to a position of power *because* they are incompetent. Reasoning is that they do less damage there.
The day that Real Networks has a big lobby in the EU is the day that monkeys will be flying out of my ass. No American company has a more significant lobby in the EU than Microsoft, save for IBM. Microsoft has been breaching all boundaries that exist for companies, and Real Networks is simply a reason to get these pirates under control again.
So how do you go about the clueless leaking sensitive information through their regular account? Shut that down as well? Fire the clueless and let HR hire more of them?
This position on the issue requires a bunch of lawyers scrutinizing every email leaving the company. This is hopeless: you have to come up with something better to justify banning webmail.
Slashdot Mirror
The tricky part is to get him under oath. He's not been there before. That's the lesson he learned from Clinton. Don't go under oath. He has lied all the way through his presidency, but not once has he been put under oath. Luckily, for a president, lying is expected behaviour, and the populace will accept any lie from any government official, as long as its not under oath. Lies are okay, as long as its not under oath. Because, you know, oaths are serious shit, and you shouldn't lie under them.
Given that the last few elections in the US haven't produced a president that had a majority of the votes behind him (note, even winning the popular vote doesn't guarantee that more than 50% of the population approve of the president), it's at least better than the US way. At the very least it gets for a large part rid of the 'outsider distraction' problem in the final rounds. But then again, the US seems more interested in having the decision made before January 15th than on the nature of the decision itself, so I doubt it'll fly.
The monarchy I live in is run by elected representatives of the populace, not by the populace itself. Care to explain how my queen is the head of state of a republic? representative democracies, tell
2012: the year the People's Republic of China recaptures the Island of Taipei. US stands by and watches after the Chinese kindly pointed out that dumping their dollar reserves on the open market would utterly annihilate the US economy. US is considering to grow corn and movies for their new Chinese overlords.
A nerd is interested in technology, surrounds himself with gadgets and is socially inept. A geek is the same, only difference is that a geek likes being like that.
It benefits you because it benefits the syndicate. Everyone is part of the syndicate, including you. What's good for the syndicate is good for you. That's why we can sell 13 cent eggs for 5 cents and make a profit. Wanna try chocolate covered cotton?
It stamps down on piracy. Piracy is bad, as it hurts profit. More profit means more income for government from corporations (*cough*). More income for government means lower taxes for individuals (*cough**cough*). You see, this bill will lower the tax-rate.
Need more ways to spin this?
To re-iterate the GP, patents are not there to protect ideas, but inventions. Patent law explicitly forbids the patenting of ideas, even though the USPTO seems to ignore the law (viz. one-click patent). As for ownership of ideas, try to think this one through. If one can patent ideas, any random thought can be owned. So I can patent time-travel, more fuel-efficient cars than currently exist, mi's next twenty comments on slashdot, the cure for cancer, etc., etc. As I would own these ideas, anybody that actually invents one of these should pay me money, as the ideas are rightfully mine.
Yet another fuckup by the US, basing politics on ideology rather than reality.
So, a democracy is ruled by the populace, and the US is not a democracy, but a republic. So, pretty coward and stupid moderator who modded this insightful, tell me: who's supposed to run the US?
Wow, how fucked up can you become? You shouldn't have partisans in charge of elections, you should have neutrals there. You know, people that care about your constitution and the proper running of the state, not people whose career depends on the outcome! If these aren't around, well then, maybe you should throw in the towel and declare this democracy experiment a failure. You're obviously not ready for it yet.
The big question of course is: would it destroy the pharmaceuticals? Even without patents there still is a market worth trillions of dollars for drugs. This demand will be filled somehow, that's inevitable. Save for government institutes, pharmaceuticals are the only entities large enough to be able to hold the necessary clinical trials for new drugs to get adopted. Will new drugs and treatments stop being researched? Given that very wealthy and also a much larger and therefore more important group of well-to-do people are not very inclined to simply whither off and die when they're ill, I'm pretty sure that some form of economic incentive would be found very quickly to reward research into important diseases. This will most likely take the form of billion dollar foundations that sponsor research in particular areas. With the absence of patent law, the results of such research would be available for all (including developing countries). Note that in many cases, drug research is a question of life and death for the ill. They'll pay to develop a cure, and as long as it doesn't make sense to take your money into your grave, you can be sure about that fact.
And as usual it is argued that because 'The land of the free' is not worse than some random dictatorship, we should not criticize the 'moral leaders of the world'. Bah, pathetic.
So, we turn to section 6. Section 6 has a few options for distributing your work. For static linking you basically need to enable your user to (a) modify the LGPL'd based stuff (for which you have to provide source), and (b) relink it with your application (for which you do not need to provide source). You thus only need to make the object code available to enable the re-linking. This is far from opening up the source. Other scenarios including shared linking are explored as well, but the total picture is simply that you are wrong. LGPL'd stuff does not force you to give up the source code when statically linked: you just have to make sure that your users can relink in whatever way (you can do it for them).
Many more examples exist, and it really questions the assumption on granting patents that the stuff patented would be undisclosed without such patents. As far as I can see, it's an arbitrary payoff to the first guy that bothers to patent things, and cuts off innovation in that area until the patent expires. Given that the fundamental assumption underlying patents is false in this day and age where a multitude of people are studying any part of science, the question should be asked if the patent system actually serves a purpose still.
As Elladan is saying in a sibling post: the USPTO is batshit insane. Though actually they aren't. The USPTO forms a racketeering scheme: the only way you can keep out of their claws is by paying them off, i.e., applying for patents yourself. This will only give you very limited protection, but that's all you're going to get. The USPTO has 'customers', like Verizon, which pay them money to rubberstamp their patents. The fallout, like killing companies such as Vonage, is for the economy to swallow. It'll destroy the US economy at some point in time, and all we can do is point and giggle.
My daughter, when she was four, was really frightened by a game in which Pooh-bear could hurt himself on a blueberry bush in a game. I had to take over play for a few months, because she couldn't handle the suspension. Should we ban Pooh-bear now?
The real big idea behind anti-trust law is that monopolies are bad, and everything should be done to prevent someone simply buying one. If it grows on its own strength, not much to be done about it. However, if a monopoly gets bought, government (historically US, currently only the EU), will try to prevent it. Remember GE-Honeywell merger? Neither were monopolies, though after merging they would practically be one. EU said illegal.
Given that I spend much of my childhood simulating the killing of all of my friends (and they trying to shoot me; an actual frag being a matter of consensus), I don't think video realism is really up to par yet with little kids aiming guns at other little kids. Yes, there's more gore in the video game, but that's only because my mom didn't allow us to smear ourselves with ketchup.
Well, the disappearance of permafrost is threatening all structures build on the Siberian tundras. The Siberians are now slowly seeing their homes sinking, and strangely, they're not shouting with joy over it.
2.6.12-9-386 2.6.15-23-386 2.6.17-10-386 2.6.20-12-386
I still remember the day when someone pointed out Netscape as a replacement for Mosaic. This was as profound an improvement as when someone pointed me to Google as a replacement of Altavista. The initial netscape was a huge improvement over anything out there, and for me, it made the web.
And given that alcohol is on many levels much more addictive and destructive than heroin, you might want to ask yourself: why hasn't our society collapsed under the weight of all those alcohol users? Simple: not all alcohol users destroy themselves. Most people do take care of themselves, albeit not optimally. This will be no different with other drugs.
Indeed, the real Dilbert principle is that people get promoted to a position of power *because* they are incompetent. Reasoning is that they do less damage there.
The day that Real Networks has a big lobby in the EU is the day that monkeys will be flying out of my ass. No American company has a more significant lobby in the EU than Microsoft, save for IBM. Microsoft has been breaching all boundaries that exist for companies, and Real Networks is simply a reason to get these pirates under control again.
This position on the issue requires a bunch of lawyers scrutinizing every email leaving the company. This is hopeless: you have to come up with something better to justify banning webmail.