Thanks. I've been looking for a place to put this:
Article summary: People used to use floppy disks. Now they're old and slow and don't hold much data and break a lot. USB thumb drives are cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet! The purpose of the USB drive is to flip out and kill people.
My apologies if this article really was written by a twelve-year old. If so, it's a decent article, and it's not your fault that it got posted to Slashdot for jerks like me to ridicule.
You're right. This is wonderful news. In "The Firm", the guy said that if you wanted to hurt the Mob, go after their lawyers. But I like your alternative remedy better. You want to hurt the Mob? You have to put a dent in their supply of college students with no money and bad judgment.
Yeah, once we've put a few million of them behind bars, they'll start having trouble moving their inventory, and they'll have to move to something more legal and less profitable, like collecting aluminum cans from local dumpsters.
Don't worry. I'm sure the government will soon come out with a study showing how the profits from w4r3z all end up in the hands of Osama bin Laden. Then we can all realize that the government is just trying to protect us little people.
Everything changed in the wake of September 11th. Didn't you get the memo?
"They are crazy. What sane, rational person straps explosives to himself and runs into a crowded area and blows himself up because he believes that a big invisible man in the sky will reward him with 13 virgins in the afterlife? Nobody."
If I were under the delusion that, by doing so, I would be striking a blow for a good and noble cause, while simultaneously guaranteeing myself an eternity in paradise, the explosive conclusion follows logically from the premises.
I don't see it as crazy. Many people we consider quite sane and normal have farcical beliefs that they are wholly unwilling--possibly even unable--to question. I personally lump most religious people fall into this category, as well as free market zealots, dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, a lot of New Agers, and knee-jerk patriots. Only a handful among them are incapable of rational thought, but they cannot be made to examine or question those assumptions that underpin their view of the world.
I think it's endemic to human nature. We want to seek out a cause that elevates us above others, demands our energy and action, and provides a meaning that day-to-day living may seem to lack. That's the hook that lures people into terrorist camps, UFO cults, Scientology, and all manner of other causes that we outsiders consider insane.
In response to 9/11, we adopted the same us-vs-them mentality that held the hijackers under its sway. We wanted to find "them" and blow "them" to smithereens, and anyone who questioned those actions was helping "them". I believe that some of our actions were justified (beating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, for example). But everything we've done has had the unintended effect of rallying support for "them" around the globe.
So what to do? I don't see any way to sap the energy from the opposition, except by drawing more people into the "us" camp. In Iraq, that may mean reducing our presence there, replacing our troops with Iraqi soldiers or international troops. At home, it means reducing our dependence on oil, so that we don't need to be so militarily involved in the Middle East, or to buddy up to corrupt regimes like Saudi Arabia. Around the world, it means fighting global poverty and disease.
There will still be terrorists, and we'll still need to take reasonable precautions to defend ourselves against them. But I have this cockeyed theory that boils down to, "If this world is a decent place for everyone to live, people won't be so eager to blow themselves into the next one."
Much of the legal system... hell, much of human thought and reason derives from the determination of appropriate analogies. When the Supreme Court was trying to decide if flag burning was legal, they did it by exploring how well the act analogized to other forms of communication. When new crimes are created by the existence of new technology, the legal system tries to come to grips with them by making analogies to other, more mundane acts, and only develops new classes of crimes when that fails.
Analogies can be fallacious, or applied too literally, but I really don't see what your beef is against analogies in general. They can be very useful tools.
Not really. You can't be here legally unless you've received permission from Customs. That's the way it's been since the U.S. became a country. Prior to that, there was a free-for-all period where those who got there "first" (the Indians didn't have guns, and therefore didn't count) got to claim huge chunks of land as their property, and decide who could come next.
I think the analogy of the Internet as a whole is a better one. If you can send a request, using only publicly available protocols and information (no breaking WEP keys, exploiting security holes, brute forcing passwords, etc.) then you're authorized to use the publicly accessible resources that are available on that network.
In the same way, do you feel you have the right to decrypt DirecTV's signal without paying for it? They are broadcasting their--sometimes pornographic--signals directly through the bodies of you and your children!!!
Think about it. They're blasting pornography directly into your kids' brains! Using their service is hardly sufficient punishment for that sort of act.
Or maybe a nearby park is having an outdoor concert, which can be clearly heard from your house. By your... *ahem*... "novel" legal theory, the moment their sound waves reached your property, they lost all right to enforce copyright laws against you. You can now take their music and rebroadcast it to the world, legally.
Personally, I agree with a lot of the posters here: that encrypting a wireless network is akin to marking your land with "no tresspassing" signs. If my device can get on a network just by making a DHCP request, then I have the right to assume that I'm allowed to use it.
So while I support the "open" interpretation, your theories about property seem rather unsophisticated.
There are reasons for some programs to be in/bin, and others in/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin,/usr/sbin,/home/$USER/bin, and/opt. Well, okay, maybe not/opt. They're the same reasons some Windows executables are in C:\Program Files, while others are in C:\WINNT, or C:\WINNT\system32, etc. Now, I'm fine with slopping an abstraction layer over the top of it, but you can't just dump all the binaries in one folder without finding another way to make the distinction between administrator applications, local vs. remote applications, etc. Too much flexibility would be lost.
As to changing the name of/var,/etc, etc., it doesn't seem necessary. I mean, Microsoft decided that the default user experience shouldn't allow them to browse Program Files or system files at all, and you can do a great deal without that ability. So the sort of n00bs (and I use the term affectionately) who require the sort of ease-of-use you describe don't need to have easier names for these folders. They need to be able to forget that the folders exist.
As for installing programs, I think apt-get is the way to go. The idea of repositories is wonderful. The biggest limitation is that the amount of testing required to ensure that everything works well together keeps a lot of software out of the official repository. So either more work needs to be done to get everything official, or a workaround needs to be created. If I were setting it up, I'd suggest introducing a "local repository", along with a way to create a simple installer that would take the file, copy it to the local repository, and then run apt-get install for the new package. All this could be easily hidden from the user. To them, it's just "double click, dialog asking if you really want to install this software, a request for a root password, and listen to the hard drive clatter for a minute or two.
IOW, Linux has a great system that wouldn't require much extension to make every bit as easy as Windows. Not everyone will use it, but there are programs for Windows which violate the Installer mentality too.
1) Most Windows installs don't come with "free antivirus software". They come with 30-60 day trial subscriptions, after which your virus definitions slowly become so outdated as to be worse than useless. Plus, by default, the major AV suites are incredibly naggy, and can slow down a computer like nothing else.
Therefore, switching to a platform where it isn't
necessary does confer some advantage. As Linux gets more popular as a target for virus writers, that may change. Then again, I think Linux has a better security model, so I'm hopeful.
2) You're entirely ignoring the other use of the word "free". You may think that no end user cares about "free as in speech," but I haven't found the concept to be a difficult sell.
3) The advantages of "free as in beer" don't end when you unpack your computer and plug it in. First, because the software is free, the distro provider can throw in oodles of extra software. No fuss, no cash, no licensing agreements, no trial subscriptions, no product activation keys. I would also note that a good chunk of the software that comes pre-installed on a new Windows machine is there for the benefit of the OEM and the software manufacturer, not necessarily for the benefit of the end user. Why else would the software configuration on my mom's new laptop ask her to choose either a trial subscription to MS Office, or a free as in "we can hardly give this crap away" installation of MS Works? If the people who sold her the computer really had her best interests at heart, the thing would have come with OpenOffice pre-installed.
If--as second amendment enthusiasts claim--the goal of the amendment is to protect people from government tyranny, limiting the weapons covered under the amendment to flintlock muzzle-loaders seems to defeat the purpose. So either the right to keep and bear tactical nuclear weapons should not be infringed, or the amendment really is antiquated, and we need to go back and re-evaluate the role of private weapons in our society.
Personally, I think that the original understanding of the second amendment has been thoroughly trod into the ground, and (flamebait in three, two, one...) I don't mind. The sort of weapons required to mount serious, violent resistance to government oppression are too dangerous to be put in private hands. If the framers of the Constitution had envisioned weapons that would allow one nutjob to walk into a crowded room and kill scores of people, I think they would have been more careful in their language than "shall not be infringed".
I think a "loser pays" system would vastly reduce the number of cases seen by the courts. That would save everyone time and effort. But it would also have a chilling effect on people who have real grievances.
So I would amend the suggestion to state that the judge could apply the remedy in extreme circumstances. For example, when any lawyer with even a cursory knowledge of the facts and arguments driving the case would recognize its total lack of merit. Lawyers who bring such cases to trial should also be punished in some way. For example, being barred from practicing law for a month or so on the first offense, and bungee hanging on the second.
I would also add some protections against defendants who, expecting to win the case, drive up their own court costs beyond a reasonable level, whether the goal was to bankrupt the plaintiff or just to be "extra sure" that they won the case.
You make a good point. If someone thinks curing malaria has greater utility than, say, building online stores, she might nevertheless have the capacity and interest to do the latter, but not the former. If everyone only worked on "important things", we'd very quickly find out that we'd underestimated the importance of the rest of it.
But my analogy wasn't supposed to be about individual choices, it was supposed to be about the priorities of society as a whole. I was certainly not trying to chastize any one person for not working on malarial research.
Allow me to extend your extension to my analogy. We've got one harried firefighter rushing to put out poor little Timmy, while a whole legion of them show up to get the mayor's cat out of a tree. This situation exists because the people running the local emergency response have found it more profitable to tend to the needs of rich, well-connected individuals than to the needs of a poor millworker's kid.
I've been working under the assumption that there is nothing particularly fascinating about erectile dysfunction from a medical standpoint, that--paycheck for paycheck--most "grunt researchers" would be just as happy researching malaria, and that the skill sets needed to perform research in both areas overlap pretty well. Therefore, it is my belief that the decision to put so much research into erectile dysfunction and so little into malaria stems from the relative profitability in the eyes of bean-counters in big pharmaceutical companies.
Sorry if I caused confusion. I hope I've clarified myself.
Wait wait wait. You really think that forcing every product vendor to come up with a fake word like "Qwijibo" to identify their products is a good thing?
I think your rule is overly broad. Perhaps "Windows" should have been disallowed, because a window was a generic reference to a GUI concept. But I have no problem with "Tide detergent".
There are problems with trademark law, but the fact that real words can be trademarked isn't necessarily one of them. The big problem with trademark law is the same problem we have with most laws: it can be so expensive to fight off litigious bastards who file frivolous suits.
Somebody should create a repository on this guy, to keep tabs on every company he has sued or C&D'd, every lawsuit he has lost, and a quick HOWTO on examining his claims and presenting them to a judge in such a way as to maximize the likelihood of getting a summary judgment in your favor.
Re:$16 billion spent on Erectile Dysfunction resea
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Innovation Getting Slower?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes, and that was a mistake. We were using too much of it, then we recognized that it was having very serious effects on the ecosystem, and we overreacted.
At this point, we can use satellite imaging/GPS, etc. to target the areas where it would be most effective. Using DDT was highly questionable back when it was first banned, but now it seems irresponsible to not use it in measured doses.
That's my position. Following the thread, it appears that your position is simple: We had a solution, which we gave up for no good reason, and rather than looking for a better way to save the millions who die each year from malaria, we should go back to perfecting the technology to turn Grandpa Bud into a sexual dynamo.
That's the impression you're leaving in my mind, anyways. Feel free to correct me if your position is more reasonable than you're letting on.
Then again, it's your first post. I really don't expect to hear from you again.
I would suggest a solution: A much more equal distribution of wealth.
Why is a recreational problem like erectile dysfunction receiving about as much attention as AIDS, and way more attention than malaria? Because in Africa, where these two problems are wreaking havoc and killing millions every year, the potential customers for these drugs are too poor to pay for them. If they had the money to buy them, our drug companies would make these two diseases their single biggest priority.
As it is, if Grandpa Bud in the U.S.A. is willing to shell out a few hundred dollars a year to please the missus, his money is worth as much to the drug companies as an African farmer who would give everything he has to buy a cure for AIDS.
I'm not saying that it would be right or useful to simply take from the rich and give to the poor until everyone was equal. What I am saying is that, within a purely capitalist society, economic resources aren't going to be directed towards the problems of those who cannot afford to pay for a solution.
Compare, over the course of centuries, the number of people who have died of malaria to the number of people who have died of botched erectile dysfunction remedies. More to the point, compare that to the number of people who died of erectile dysfunction itself.
Then tell me how--in the great scheme of things--erectile dysfunction was the more pressing problem.
Then consider that there is currently a great deal of ongoing research in the field. Even if the problem is--how did you put it?--"solved", the companies that have products are hard at work on new refinements to the solution, and other companies are looking hard for an unpatented solution so they can cash in on the market for these drugs.
The grandparent wasn't complaining that the problem had been solved, but that it was receiving greater focus than more pressing problems.
To illustrate, imagine the following conversation between a father and his teenage daughter:
Father: "What the hell are you doing?"
Daughter: "Filling out my application to Harvard. It's a very useful and productive thing to be doing."
Father: "While your little brother was on fire?"
Daughter:::rolls eyes:: "Don't you want me to get into college?"
Compared to some of the real problems out there (AIDS, malaria, etc.), erectile dysfunction is a recreational problem. As with everything else in life, you play when the work is done.
In order for Communism to work, the idea of private property must eventually disappear. China claims to be a Communist nation, but in its rush to modernize, it has been slowly mixing capitalistic techniques into its economy. Profit motive, participation in open markets, etc.
China demonstrates that totalitarianism and Capitalism are perfectly compatible. Which brings up the question of why the Bush administration continually conflates "promoting free trade" with "promoting democracy".
Nor is there a Communist maxim that everyone is equal in talent or ability. What you're failing to grasp is the distinction between "Everyone is equal" and "Everyone deserves to be treated equally". The former is only claimed by a few untalented academians who don't dare subject their theories to the real world. The latter is a principle of Communism, but also of many branches of Enlightenment thinking. For example, it guided the creation of the Constitution of the United States.
Most MMORPGs use levelling and equipment as their primary rewards. It's the sort of system where time -> better character. If the goal is to provide the best experience for the casual gamer, then it seems like it would be a good idea to break that link, or at least minimize it.
If you want to attract casual gamers, it seems like some cash bonuses are in order. For example, if you charged $1/hour up to the first twenty hours in a month, then said anything above that was free. Chances are, even a "casual gamer" is going to play for fifteen hours a month, so the financial difference isn't huge. The point is to make them feel like they're not getting too gypped by not spending their every waking hour in Azeroth.
Now, if someone is playing an hour a night, every other day, they won't last long unless you give them something interesting to do in that hour. If just about every dungeon requires a five hour grind-a-thon to complete, that's no good. Whatever the goal of a dungeon is, there should be another path to that goal which--though harder in aggregate--can be completed in 50-90 minute chunks.
Casual gamers are good for a company because they provide steady revenue, and they outnumber the fanatics by a huge number. But the fanatics are the ones who run the clans, maintain the websites, buy the tee shirts, and tell all their friends about teh aw3som3st g4m3 EVAAAR!!!1 So it seems to me that going the route I suggest could suck away the most enthusiastic portion of the fanbase.
Raising penalties to an unreasonable level can have lots of effects.
1) It could make people less likely to commit the act.
2) It could make people lose respect for the law against the activity being punished.
3) It could make law enforcement officers hesitant to actually inflict the punishment. In the case of littering that you describe, it's gone from a stiff, "that'll l'arn 'im" fine to an unreasonable fine that could be financially ruinous to just about anyone. If I were a cop, and I was pulling someone over for littering in that county, nothing short of driving a Lamborghini would keep me from letting the guy off with a warning.
Same goes for file sharing. The fines for copyright infringement are already so high that a serious violator can end up owing more than their state of origin is worth. But people keep doing it, because the reward is great (free music), the harm to artists seems miniscule, and the likelihood of getting caught is zero in most peoples' minds.
"As a developer, my interest is making sure that the software I write runs on everything."
I'll see your smartphone and raise you a Commodore 64 and two PDP-11's.
Seriously, everything? Most developers have one platform in mind for any given application. If you're writing your app in a well-modularized way, only the GUI code should require a lot of rewriting anyways.
To me, your complaint is like someone holding up a cat, and complaining about how it isn't round, isn't orange, and isn't made of rubber, so how in the hell am I supposed to play basketball with it? Qt--like any widgety API--is meant for those who are writing for the platform that the API supports.
Nitpick 1: Ethanol contains less energy than oil per unit volume.
Nitpick 2: The value of energy from plants doesn't have anything to do with their efficiency as solar cells. Any inefficiency is more than made up for when you consider that the things manufacture themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The same way my brother and I did: Cardboard boxes with holes for our arms.
By the same logic, I guess Slashdot is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tim Berners-Lee.
All those websites he owns, you'd think he'd have more money.
Thanks. I've been looking for a place to put this:
Article summary: People used to use floppy disks. Now they're old and slow and don't hold much data and break a lot. USB thumb drives are cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet! The purpose of the USB drive is to flip out and kill people.
My apologies if this article really was written by a twelve-year old. If so, it's a decent article, and it's not your fault that it got posted to Slashdot for jerks like me to ridicule.
You're right. This is wonderful news. In "The Firm", the guy said that if you wanted to hurt the Mob, go after their lawyers. But I like your alternative remedy better. You want to hurt the Mob? You have to put a dent in their supply of college students with no money and bad judgment.
Yeah, once we've put a few million of them behind bars, they'll start having trouble moving their inventory, and they'll have to move to something more legal and less profitable, like collecting aluminum cans from local dumpsters.
Don't worry. I'm sure the government will soon come out with a study showing how the profits from w4r3z all end up in the hands of Osama bin Laden. Then we can all realize that the government is just trying to protect us little people.
Everything changed in the wake of September 11th. Didn't you get the memo?
I don't see it as crazy. Many people we consider quite sane and normal have farcical beliefs that they are wholly unwilling--possibly even unable--to question. I personally lump most religious people fall into this category, as well as free market zealots, dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, a lot of New Agers, and knee-jerk patriots. Only a handful among them are incapable of rational thought, but they cannot be made to examine or question those assumptions that underpin their view of the world.
I think it's endemic to human nature. We want to seek out a cause that elevates us above others, demands our energy and action, and provides a meaning that day-to-day living may seem to lack. That's the hook that lures people into terrorist camps, UFO cults, Scientology, and all manner of other causes that we outsiders consider insane.
In response to 9/11, we adopted the same us-vs-them mentality that held the hijackers under its sway. We wanted to find "them" and blow "them" to smithereens, and anyone who questioned those actions was helping "them". I believe that some of our actions were justified (beating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, for example). But everything we've done has had the unintended effect of rallying support for "them" around the globe.
So what to do? I don't see any way to sap the energy from the opposition, except by drawing more people into the "us" camp. In Iraq, that may mean reducing our presence there, replacing our troops with Iraqi soldiers or international troops. At home, it means reducing our dependence on oil, so that we don't need to be so militarily involved in the Middle East, or to buddy up to corrupt regimes like Saudi Arabia. Around the world, it means fighting global poverty and disease.
There will still be terrorists, and we'll still need to take reasonable precautions to defend ourselves against them. But I have this cockeyed theory that boils down to, "If this world is a decent place for everyone to live, people won't be so eager to blow themselves into the next one."
Much of the legal system... hell, much of human thought and reason derives from the determination of appropriate analogies. When the Supreme Court was trying to decide if flag burning was legal, they did it by exploring how well the act analogized to other forms of communication. When new crimes are created by the existence of new technology, the legal system tries to come to grips with them by making analogies to other, more mundane acts, and only develops new classes of crimes when that fails.
Analogies can be fallacious, or applied too literally, but I really don't see what your beef is against analogies in general. They can be very useful tools.
In summary: +5 insightful, my ass.
Not really. You can't be here legally unless you've received permission from Customs. That's the way it's been since the U.S. became a country. Prior to that, there was a free-for-all period where those who got there "first" (the Indians didn't have guns, and therefore didn't count) got to claim huge chunks of land as their property, and decide who could come next.
I think the analogy of the Internet as a whole is a better one. If you can send a request, using only publicly available protocols and information (no breaking WEP keys, exploiting security holes, brute forcing passwords, etc.) then you're authorized to use the publicly accessible resources that are available on that network.
In the same way, do you feel you have the right to decrypt DirecTV's signal without paying for it? They are broadcasting their--sometimes pornographic--signals directly through the bodies of you and your children!!!
Think about it. They're blasting pornography directly into your kids' brains! Using their service is hardly sufficient punishment for that sort of act.
Or maybe a nearby park is having an outdoor concert, which can be clearly heard from your house. By your... *ahem*... "novel" legal theory, the moment their sound waves reached your property, they lost all right to enforce copyright laws against you. You can now take their music and rebroadcast it to the world, legally.
Personally, I agree with a lot of the posters here: that encrypting a wireless network is akin to marking your land with "no tresspassing" signs. If my device can get on a network just by making a DHCP request, then I have the right to assume that I'm allowed to use it.
So while I support the "open" interpretation, your theories about property seem rather unsophisticated.
First time I've gotten this message:
"A script is causing Mozilla to run slowly. If it continues, Mozilla may become unresponsive." Then it asked if I wanted to cancel the script.
Have you noticed this?
There are reasons for some programs to be in /bin, and others in /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/sbin, /home/$USER/bin, and /opt. Well, okay, maybe not /opt. They're the same reasons some Windows executables are in C:\Program Files, while others are in C:\WINNT, or C:\WINNT\system32, etc. Now, I'm fine with slopping an abstraction layer over the top of it, but you can't just dump all the binaries in one folder without finding another way to make the distinction between administrator applications, local vs. remote applications, etc. Too much flexibility would be lost.
/var, /etc, etc., it doesn't seem necessary. I mean, Microsoft decided that the default user experience shouldn't allow them to browse Program Files or system files at all, and you can do a great deal without that ability. So the sort of n00bs (and I use the term affectionately) who require the sort of ease-of-use you describe don't need to have easier names for these folders. They need to be able to forget that the folders exist.
As to changing the name of
As for installing programs, I think apt-get is the way to go. The idea of repositories is wonderful. The biggest limitation is that the amount of testing required to ensure that everything works well together keeps a lot of software out of the official repository. So either more work needs to be done to get everything official, or a workaround needs to be created. If I were setting it up, I'd suggest introducing a "local repository", along with a way to create a simple installer that would take the file, copy it to the local repository, and then run apt-get install for the new package. All this could be easily hidden from the user. To them, it's just "double click, dialog asking if you really want to install this software, a request for a root password, and listen to the hard drive clatter for a minute or two.
IOW, Linux has a great system that wouldn't require much extension to make every bit as easy as Windows. Not everyone will use it, but there are programs for Windows which violate the Installer mentality too.
1) Most Windows installs don't come with "free antivirus software". They come with 30-60 day trial subscriptions, after which your virus definitions slowly become so outdated as to be worse than useless. Plus, by default, the major AV suites are incredibly naggy, and can slow down a computer like nothing else.
Therefore, switching to a platform where it isn't
necessary does confer some advantage. As Linux gets more popular as a target for virus writers, that may change. Then again, I think Linux has a better security model, so I'm hopeful.
2) You're entirely ignoring the other use of the word "free". You may think that no end user cares about "free as in speech," but I haven't found the concept to be a difficult sell.
3) The advantages of "free as in beer" don't end when you unpack your computer and plug it in. First, because the software is free, the distro provider can throw in oodles of extra software. No fuss, no cash, no licensing agreements, no trial subscriptions, no product activation keys. I would also note that a good chunk of the software that comes pre-installed on a new Windows machine is there for the benefit of the OEM and the software manufacturer, not necessarily for the benefit of the end user. Why else would the software configuration on my mom's new laptop ask her to choose either a trial subscription to MS Office, or a free as in "we can hardly give this crap away" installation of MS Works? If the people who sold her the computer really had her best interests at heart, the thing would have come with OpenOffice pre-installed.
If--as second amendment enthusiasts claim--the goal of the amendment is to protect people from government tyranny, limiting the weapons covered under the amendment to flintlock muzzle-loaders seems to defeat the purpose. So either the right to keep and bear tactical nuclear weapons should not be infringed, or the amendment really is antiquated, and we need to go back and re-evaluate the role of private weapons in our society.
Personally, I think that the original understanding of the second amendment has been thoroughly trod into the ground, and (flamebait in three, two, one...) I don't mind. The sort of weapons required to mount serious, violent resistance to government oppression are too dangerous to be put in private hands. If the framers of the Constitution had envisioned weapons that would allow one nutjob to walk into a crowded room and kill scores of people, I think they would have been more careful in their language than "shall not be infringed".
I think a "loser pays" system would vastly reduce the number of cases seen by the courts. That would save everyone time and effort. But it would also have a chilling effect on people who have real grievances.
So I would amend the suggestion to state that the judge could apply the remedy in extreme circumstances. For example, when any lawyer with even a cursory knowledge of the facts and arguments driving the case would recognize its total lack of merit. Lawyers who bring such cases to trial should also be punished in some way. For example, being barred from practicing law for a month or so on the first offense, and bungee hanging on the second.
I would also add some protections against defendants who, expecting to win the case, drive up their own court costs beyond a reasonable level, whether the goal was to bankrupt the plaintiff or just to be "extra sure" that they won the case.
You make a good point. If someone thinks curing malaria has greater utility than, say, building online stores, she might nevertheless have the capacity and interest to do the latter, but not the former. If everyone only worked on "important things", we'd very quickly find out that we'd underestimated the importance of the rest of it.
But my analogy wasn't supposed to be about individual choices, it was supposed to be about the priorities of society as a whole. I was certainly not trying to chastize any one person for not working on malarial research.
Allow me to extend your extension to my analogy. We've got one harried firefighter rushing to put out poor little Timmy, while a whole legion of them show up to get the mayor's cat out of a tree. This situation exists because the people running the local emergency response have found it more profitable to tend to the needs of rich, well-connected individuals than to the needs of a poor millworker's kid.
I've been working under the assumption that there is nothing particularly fascinating about erectile dysfunction from a medical standpoint, that--paycheck for paycheck--most "grunt researchers" would be just as happy researching malaria, and that the skill sets needed to perform research in both areas overlap pretty well. Therefore, it is my belief that the decision to put so much research into erectile dysfunction and so little into malaria stems from the relative profitability in the eyes of bean-counters in big pharmaceutical companies.
Sorry if I caused confusion. I hope I've clarified myself.
Wait wait wait. You really think that forcing every product vendor to come up with a fake word like "Qwijibo" to identify their products is a good thing?
I think your rule is overly broad. Perhaps "Windows" should have been disallowed, because a window was a generic reference to a GUI concept. But I have no problem with "Tide detergent".
There are problems with trademark law, but the fact that real words can be trademarked isn't necessarily one of them. The big problem with trademark law is the same problem we have with most laws: it can be so expensive to fight off litigious bastards who file frivolous suits.
Somebody should create a repository on this guy, to keep tabs on every company he has sued or C&D'd, every lawsuit he has lost, and a quick HOWTO on examining his claims and presenting them to a judge in such a way as to maximize the likelihood of getting a summary judgment in your favor.
Yes, and that was a mistake. We were using too much of it, then we recognized that it was having very serious effects on the ecosystem, and we overreacted.
At this point, we can use satellite imaging/GPS, etc. to target the areas where it would be most effective. Using DDT was highly questionable back when it was first banned, but now it seems irresponsible to not use it in measured doses.
That's my position. Following the thread, it appears that your position is simple: We had a solution, which we gave up for no good reason, and rather than looking for a better way to save the millions who die each year from malaria, we should go back to perfecting the technology to turn Grandpa Bud into a sexual dynamo.
That's the impression you're leaving in my mind, anyways. Feel free to correct me if your position is more reasonable than you're letting on.
Then again, it's your first post. I really don't expect to hear from you again.
I would suggest a solution: A much more equal distribution of wealth.
Why is a recreational problem like erectile dysfunction receiving about as much attention as AIDS, and way more attention than malaria? Because in Africa, where these two problems are wreaking havoc and killing millions every year, the potential customers for these drugs are too poor to pay for them. If they had the money to buy them, our drug companies would make these two diseases their single biggest priority.
As it is, if Grandpa Bud in the U.S.A. is willing to shell out a few hundred dollars a year to please the missus, his money is worth as much to the drug companies as an African farmer who would give everything he has to buy a cure for AIDS.
I'm not saying that it would be right or useful to simply take from the rich and give to the poor until everyone was equal. What I am saying is that, within a purely capitalist society, economic resources aren't going to be directed towards the problems of those who cannot afford to pay for a solution.
You, sir, are full of it.
::rolls eyes:: "Don't you want me to get into college?"
Compare, over the course of centuries, the number of people who have died of malaria to the number of people who have died of botched erectile dysfunction remedies. More to the point, compare that to the number of people who died of erectile dysfunction itself.
Then tell me how--in the great scheme of things--erectile dysfunction was the more pressing problem.
Then consider that there is currently a great deal of ongoing research in the field. Even if the problem is--how did you put it?--"solved", the companies that have products are hard at work on new refinements to the solution, and other companies are looking hard for an unpatented solution so they can cash in on the market for these drugs.
The grandparent wasn't complaining that the problem had been solved, but that it was receiving greater focus than more pressing problems.
To illustrate, imagine the following conversation between a father and his teenage daughter:
Father: "What the hell are you doing?"
Daughter: "Filling out my application to Harvard. It's a very useful and productive thing to be doing."
Father: "While your little brother was on fire?"
Daughter:
Compared to some of the real problems out there (AIDS, malaria, etc.), erectile dysfunction is a recreational problem. As with everything else in life, you play when the work is done.
Communism and Capitalism are compatible? How?
In order for Communism to work, the idea of private property must eventually disappear. China claims to be a Communist nation, but in its rush to modernize, it has been slowly mixing capitalistic techniques into its economy. Profit motive, participation in open markets, etc.
China demonstrates that totalitarianism and Capitalism are perfectly compatible. Which brings up the question of why the Bush administration continually conflates "promoting free trade" with "promoting democracy".
Nor is there a Communist maxim that everyone is equal in talent or ability. What you're failing to grasp is the distinction between "Everyone is equal" and "Everyone deserves to be treated equally". The former is only claimed by a few untalented academians who don't dare subject their theories to the real world. The latter is a principle of Communism, but also of many branches of Enlightenment thinking. For example, it guided the creation of the Constitution of the United States.
Not necessarily.
Most MMORPGs use levelling and equipment as their primary rewards. It's the sort of system where time -> better character. If the goal is to provide the best experience for the casual gamer, then it seems like it would be a good idea to break that link, or at least minimize it.
If you want to attract casual gamers, it seems like some cash bonuses are in order. For example, if you charged $1/hour up to the first twenty hours in a month, then said anything above that was free. Chances are, even a "casual gamer" is going to play for fifteen hours a month, so the financial difference isn't huge. The point is to make them feel like they're not getting too gypped by not spending their every waking hour in Azeroth.
Now, if someone is playing an hour a night, every other day, they won't last long unless you give them something interesting to do in that hour. If just about every dungeon requires a five hour grind-a-thon to complete, that's no good. Whatever the goal of a dungeon is, there should be another path to that goal which--though harder in aggregate--can be completed in 50-90 minute chunks.
Casual gamers are good for a company because they provide steady revenue, and they outnumber the fanatics by a huge number. But the fanatics are the ones who run the clans, maintain the websites, buy the tee shirts, and tell all their friends about teh aw3som3st g4m3 EVAAAR!!!1 So it seems to me that going the route I suggest could suck away the most enthusiastic portion of the fanbase.
I think that it's just an ill-conceived summary. But just to be on the safe side, we should switch off their backbone to ensure compliance.
Raising penalties to an unreasonable level can have lots of effects.
1) It could make people less likely to commit the act.
2) It could make people lose respect for the law against the activity being punished.
3) It could make law enforcement officers hesitant to actually inflict the punishment. In the case of littering that you describe, it's gone from a stiff, "that'll l'arn 'im" fine to an unreasonable fine that could be financially ruinous to just about anyone. If I were a cop, and I was pulling someone over for littering in that county, nothing short of driving a Lamborghini would keep me from letting the guy off with a warning.
Same goes for file sharing. The fines for copyright infringement are already so high that a serious violator can end up owing more than their state of origin is worth. But people keep doing it, because the reward is great (free music), the harm to artists seems miniscule, and the likelihood of getting caught is zero in most peoples' minds.
Seriously, everything? Most developers have one platform in mind for any given application. If you're writing your app in a well-modularized way, only the GUI code should require a lot of rewriting anyways.
To me, your complaint is like someone holding up a cat, and complaining about how it isn't round, isn't orange, and isn't made of rubber, so how in the hell am I supposed to play basketball with it? Qt--like any widgety API--is meant for those who are writing for the platform that the API supports.
Nitpick 1: Ethanol contains less energy than oil per unit volume.
Nitpick 2: The value of energy from plants doesn't have anything to do with their efficiency as solar cells. Any inefficiency is more than made up for when you consider that the things manufacture themselves.