Why can't you just choose the one that works best for YOU and accept that what is best for you may not be best for all other users. MacOS is good for Desktop Publishing and Graphic design. Linux is good for those who value their freedom (speech and beer), and Win2k is good for compatibility and for it's ease of use. x-BSD...Well, I've never used it, but I'm sure it's good for something. The point is, find something that works for you and accept that your solution might not work for everyone.
...it's important to consider, though, that while MacOS has historically been the niche player for desktop publishing and graphic design, OS X is one huge departure from the classic MacOS. I'll be the first to admit that it's still a tad early to say exactly what niches OS X will fill, but I don't think it's an overstatement to say that OS X stands an excellent chance of breaking out of the dp/design niche and filling far larger shoes. After all, we're looking at a first in the industry--a BSD system that your grandmother can use without batting an eyelid. That, if nothing else, shows a great deal of promise...
Of course, I realize that the Fortune 500 is not a foolproof, catch-all guide to measuring a company's worth. You'll understand, though, if I have a tad more faith in it than in baseless rantings...
SOS is based in Utah, and we have different legal and cultural norms here.
Hoy, you can say that again. Last time I was in The Salt Lake City of Latter Da--I mean, Salt Lake City, my friends and I had to be sponsored members of the club we found just to have a drink and shoot some pool (apparently, local law prohibits the sale of alcohol pretty much everywhere except clubs that maintain a membership list (where everyone must be sponsored by an existing member) and sub-basement N36, Room 101 of the HQ.)
Granted, the club's membership requirements weren't that stiff ("Hey, Steve, wanna sponsor these guys? Sure, Jim!",) but nonetheless...
Speech in Utah takes exactly one approved form, and I don't think I even need to drop the name of the organization that determines what form that is. During this same previous trip, the local press had run a little drivel piece that pointed out, among other things, that even Democrats were made to feel welcome at the local 4th of July parade. (This same article featured a sentence about a particularly precocious youth who had supposedly uttered (with no coaching, heavens no,) "Daddy, what's a Democrat?")
The university is well within its rights (and upholding its duty to instill good moral character within its students) when they treat your site this way.
You'll forgive me for saying this, but anyone who believes that a public university is right to silence dissident student voices in the name of "instilling good moral character within it's students" has a pretty fscked sense of moral character. That includes juvenille insults, as well; if you can't even handle a juvenille insult, well...
This is not about speech. This is not about freedom. This is just a student bitching about the "fascist administration". Nothing to see here; please move along.
Um, that's political speech, if ever I've heard it. Doesn't matter whether or not the kid's a crackpot; it's still protected speech under the Constitution. Now, that the administration saw fit to shut down the site and is seemingly pressing legal charges makes me wonder which side of the argument is playing host to the crackpots, but that's a different matter.
(I still don't understand why the RIAA doesn't encourage the police to shut down all supermarkets. It would only be logical, because most of then sell e.g. kitchen knives. And I don't know if you realized that, but you can commit illegal, even brutal acts with kitchen knives. Just as you can commit illegal acts when you use the Napster network.)
...oh, brilliant analogy. "Kitchen knives may be bad, therefore supermarkets should be shut down." Somewhat akin to, "Well, since there exist dogs that will attack innocent pasers-by, we should eradicate mammals! " Short, succinct, hard-hitting, and completely bunk.
Hey, look--I found a better example, right here under my chair!
Let's say that Bob's Corner Grocery has one aisle of produce and ninteen aisles of kitchen knives. The vast majority of the kitchen knives are stolen property, though purchased by Bob from various distributors (Bob himself wouldn't even think of stealing somebody else's property.) "Heck, I'm no criminal," Bob is fond of saying, "I just sell groceries. It's not any of my business how my suppliers get their goods, now, is it?"
You're the dupe that looks straight into Bob's bewildered, childish eyes and says, "It's OK, Bob. You're not part of the problem. Don't you worry one bit, I still believe in you!" right as the police arrive to drag him downtown.
Napster does indeed give away something you should be paying for. Napster, before it started getting sued, was doing exactly jack and squat to curb the distribution of copyrighted material through it's service. The Napster client app is completely useless without the central server, and Napster is in charge of running that server. It's like saying that the bullet just happened to hit Mr. Doe, and all this poor guy here did was pull the trigger.
OPERATEUR: ecran principal s'allument.
M. LE CAPTAIN: C'est vous!!!
MICHAEL: Comment allez-vous messieurs.
MICHAEL: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
M. LE CAPTAIN: Quoi vous dites!?
MICHAEL: Vous etes dans le chemin à la destruction.
MICHAEL: Vous avez pas du chance pour survivre faites votre temps.
MICHAEL: Ah-hau hau hau hau.
In short, why should we be the custodians of the universe, when our record here on Earth is shameful? I don't want to see us spread across the universe, spreading our ecological arrogance and cultural heat death.
Because wouldn't it really, really suck if some alien society like the frigin' Vogons beat us to becoming the custodians of the universe?
Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. I hold that we can't afford to continue this pattern of knowledge seeking and loss of innocence any further.
Well, I wish you godspeed in your pursuit. What little knowledge you still harbor seems to be causing you more pain than bliss.
I do hope you'll forgive me if I pursue a life of folly, though...
(Counter-troll: your first sentence, taken in the context of the non-pursuit of knowledge, is absolutely golden.)
Fast food is, in many ways, the story of contemporary America -- its work and health, its homogenization. Fast food is central to urban and suburban sprawl and to the rise of malls as retailing forces. Fast food has created a generation of new, mostly lousy jobs, cemented the divisions between rich and poor, triggered an epidemic of obesity, and sparked resentment of America's so-called cultural imperialism abroad. It's the stepchild of post-war progress in farming, slaughtering and packing, refrigeration and transportation.
Y'know, I feel kinda stupid pointing this out, but there is exactly one reason why fast food is at the epedemic level Katz keeps telling us it is.
People buy it.
Scream all you want about how mom 'n' pop's Greasy Spoon Cafe just closed down, or how 2/3 of the US population is now approaching dangerous levels of obesity, or how these companies are spreading overseas (and *gasp* succeeding!), but they've become so powerful because lots and lots of people buy their product.
Fast food is cheap, fast, (debatably) tasty, easy to access, and the same no matter where you go. For some completely inexplicable reason, people seem to like this, and subsequently keep pouring cash into McDonald's coffers for their 10-minute Big Mac Extra Value Meal lunch.
So now that fast food restaurants have proven their popularity (and that they're not going away anytime soon,) it's the fault of the corporation that society is going down the tubes (at least in Katz's head?) I dare you, Jon, to consider that the root of this problem may just be the millions of Americans who regularly and voluntarily patronize fast food restaurants instead of independant restaurants.
If the fast food corporations have become a giant, international, all-consuming monster, it's because millions of ordinary people keep happily flinging their money into the mouth of the beast.
Joe Q. Slashdotter is to blame; he goes out, buys CDs/DVDs, eats fast food, watches cable/sattelite TV, buys the fastest residential broadband connection he can, and owns the latest cell phone on the market. Then, once at work, he's crying all the way to the submit button about the crimes against humanity committed by the MPAA, RIAA, TW/AOL, McDonalds, the telcoms, and pretty much anything with an international headquarters.
Why not do your next earth-shattering exposé on the nauseating hypocracy of the average Slashdot reader, Jon?
Kudos to Hormel for standing out as a shining example of a sensible, rational company in the otherwise delusional corporate world.
No kudos whatsoever to those who for years refused to even consider honoring Hormel's quite reasonable requests regarding the use of the SPAM trademark.
After years of sticking to your guns and standing up for what you believe in, you've finally beaten the good guys. Go, team.
My favorite quote "The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four". Rock on CNN!
Well, Taco, at least CNN didn't misspell the friggin' front-page headline...
Frivolous lawsuits exist because judges (x-lawyers) allow lawyers to bring idiotic things to court and win.
Um, no.
To paraphrase somebody else, "Lawyers don't sue people, plaintiffs sue people." Frivilous lawsuits exist because ordinary people bring idiotic things to court.
Plaintiffs are allowed to pres idiotic charges because any attempt to weed out "idiotic" lawsuits would be instantly and vehemently attacked by many people (in all likelihood, yourself included) as an attempt to strip ordinary people of their rights (which it would be.)
Now go on out and play in the street like a good little troll.
I started work at a big American company as a developer.
That was all good.
The big American company I worked for then bought up a smaller American company and sent me to work there.
That was all good, too.
Then, the big American company that had bought up the smaller American company I was working for was bought up by an even bigger British company.
Still, all good.
Today, I'm a contractor in Paris for the French division of the huge British company that purchased the big American company that had purchased the little American company at which I once worked.
Peace.
(on a serious note, find a multinational, work a while in the States, and get a transfer. Easiest route to take. Further, if you want to come to France, be prepared for a 6 to 12 month tooth-and-nail grudge match to get your work papers. In French. Britian is a cake walk in comparison.)
People talk so much about the inevitable convergence of all media. But it sure is taking a long time.
Rob, not to sound old-fashioned or anything, but you've got a wicked skewed sense of 'long time'. Useable portable MP3 players have only been around for a few years; the Tivo is even younger. These things are developing at breakneck speeds; the odds that within five years your coveted "Borg Box" won't exist as you imagine it today are pretty low.
Five years from now, when you're holding the "Ultimate" (by today's standards) Borg Box in your hands, you're going to be wondering, "Yeah, but why haven't they developed one of these that integrates <insert hottest technology here> yet? And how come it only holds 12,000 hours of video? My computer can do six times that!"
Technology takes time to mature, and quite frankly, I'd call the pace at which this stuff is developing at nothing short of blazing. Bear in mind that only a decade ago, having anything over 256 colors for your PC was something to brag about, and that a decent SGI workstation from five years ago would be hard-pressed to handle a game of Tribes 2, and that just two years ago you would've had to have used an old-fashined VCR to record the N'Sync Marathon.
While mathematics is not "closed source" in the same way that some computer operating systems are, it can take years of hard work to acquire the background needed to understand advanced abstract mathematical proofs. This is because they are usually presented at a very high level that hides most of the detail, often making them beyond the grasp of a non-mathematician (even a very smart one such as a computer programmer).
Oh, come on. Is it possible that once, maybe just this once, it doesn't really make sense to try and pin the Open Source Medal on this to make it even more 133t and k3w1? But hey, while you're at it, you should probably mention that you can use mathematics on Linux, too, and that it runs perfectly on both Gnome and KDE, no less! And I heard that ESR uses it, like, every day!
That aside, the concept of "open vs. closed" applies to mathematics about as much as it applies to C++. Mathematics is a tool. There is nothing that says that the inventor of a revolutionary mathematical equation must then make her knowledge available to the world. She would be just as free to form a company that charges insanely high consulting fees to process data using her secret formula as she could post it on her webpage for all the world to use freely.
While it's true that the vast majority of all mathematical knowledge is freely available to anyone who cares to look at it, that doesn't make the concepts of "open source" and "closed source" applicable to mathematics itself.
But there are people out there firmly conviced that liberal attitudes about sex are perfectly healthy, and that pornography is in some way "expressive" and "naturual". Please tell me, what is natural about some woman being brutally sodomized by several men on camera?
Well, first off, I'd recommend calling brutal sodomy "morally reprehensible", as it is arguably a perfectly natural act (though, again, generally held as morally reprehensible.)
There are people out there firmly entrenched in the belief that conservative attitudes about sex are both healthier and morally higher, and that pornography is somehow "deviant" and "unnatural". These same people generally feel perfectly justified in pointing towards the most deviant, reprehensible acts of violent, aberrant behavior as prime examples of what pornography is. This is unfair.
It'd be somewhat akin to me calling Christianity a horrible, disgusting cult which has mercilessly slaughtered countless women and children over centuries in the name of appeasing an unseen deity. I'd be ignoring the fact that some of the world's greatest and most generous groups and individuals have acted out of their love of the Christian god. There is no "so, which is it, then?" It's both. Should we outlaw Christianity or claim that it's the most wonderfullest thing ever? Neither. It has both good and bad elements, people who respect it and people who abuse it.
The same holds true for pornography. While you are quick to point out that having people abused into pornography and tortured in front of a camera is (surprise) bad, the same moral compass cannot be used to denounce, say, a video made willingly (and happily) by a married couple for distribution in adult video stores. What is so unnatural (or rather, morally reprehensible) about that?
Why is it that a pen is considered to be more natural than a keyboard for typing (a typewriter)? I mean, even writing itself is not something natural in the animal kingdom. We came up with the idea of writing with a stick in some sand, with some paint on the cave walls and now with a keyboard on a computer screen. How can we possibly claim that one way us more natural than another to do an unnatural task?
Don't confuse unnatural with unique. Writing is perfectly natural, and we are the only species on the planet (AFAIK/as far as we can tell so far) that communicates using written language. How is writing unnatural when it is the product of nothing but purely biological thought processes? (Yes, yes, apologies to those that believe that humankind was endowed with the ability to write by monolith/aliens/divine providence/etc.)
In regard to whether a keyboard or pen is more "natural" for writing, consider this:
A pen and paper/writing media consist of two parts. The writer uses the pen to trace out the patterns of which characters he or she wishes to write using the pen. The strokes of the pen are displayed on the paper/writing media.
A keyboard is of a device with many keys (let's say 105,) and a number of which have rather abstract functions (shift, shift/caps lock, return--not to mention the control keys used on most computers.) The user presses the keys in sequence to form words and sentences, and the result is displayed by the output mechanism (screen, paper, etc.)
Now, while it is true that one will generally be far more productive with a keyboard than a pen (upon attaining a reasonable level of mastery,) a pen is decidedly less complex of an interface to get used to. In a purely empirical sense, it is easier to learn how to use an interfafce with one element as opposed to scores of elements. Again, I'm not trying to claim that pens are better than keyboards; I think they're worse. pens are slow, create inconsistent results (which vary widely between individuals), and are generally more prone to physical failure than keyboards. But they are easier to use. That, and they're a lot easier to make, as even the cheapest keyboard costs about five dollars more than a finger and some dust.
Information should be entered into a computer directly with a thought. Evaluating the thought context is what they should concentrate on.
Pssh. We shouldn't even need to enter information into computers; they should be able to do it themselves, thanks to amazingly powerful AI routines. But then again, that isn't even close to reality yet, nor are thought-controlled computers.
I don't know about other people, but I am getting DAMN tired of AOL and their annoying little control games...
Hmm. You should probably stop using AOL, then.
I mean, if you're not satisfied with the service that they provide, you really just stop using their service completely. Then, their zany shenanigans won't even matter to you.
Oh, you're under the impression that you're not using AOL when you use the AIM and ICQ networks, aren't you?
At the risk of sounding like a total ass, cry me a friggin' river. Don't like the fact that AOL changes things on services that they own and they maintain? Don't use them! How, exactly, did you get it in your head that AOL is somehow duty bound to let you use their free service with whatever software you want?
Cut off from the people you talk to? Well, looks like you have two choices, then: swallow your pride (careful not to choke) and use the evil, nasty, icky AIM client, or convince all your friends to join you on #AOheLl5uX0rZrocks for great justice.
My, but I've overlooked a third option: bitch an moan about it and propagate the idea that we need yet another antitrust lawsuit setting yet another Really, Really Bad Precedent in the tech industry. Brilliant idea. Do you like the idea of companies (and OS projects) not being free to make changes to their own systems without first going through some n-month-long review and notice period? Because that's what you're talking about. A successful antitrust case would hurt AOL directly, but it would also set a really, really unpleasant precedent for anyone else looking to create an IM network.
The road to victory for Open Source is not paved with lawsuits and anti-trust cases. That struggle will ultimately be won by the side that can pump more money and better lawyers into the legal system. The Open Source movement will win, if it does, by producing better, faster and cheaper software than Closed Source can. Instead of complaining about your inability to run free in a Closed IM network, focus instead on contributing to an Open one. Then you won't ever need to worry about being on the receiving end of cheap tricks.
Huh. You must have been stapled to your mommy's apron strings as a child. I'll bet the other kids got a kick out of that.
I used to go off into the woods, unsupervised, in grade school.
I used to walk home from school, unsupervised, almost every day.
I sat on my bed and read books, unsupervised.
I climbed trees, unsupervised.
I played video games, unsupervised.
I programmed my old Apple IIe, unsupervised.
I rode my bike all over the neighborhood for entire afternoons, unsupervised.
I played baseball in the street, unsupervised.
I went to the public library, unsupervised.
Yet I'd laugh in your face if you even to even suggest that my parents were negligent. My parents raised me to be an individual with a spirit and responsibilities of my own. I cannot even begin to express how glad I am that they did not tower over me every waking minute of the day. I wouldn't have grown into a person; I would have become a spineless, simpering cur, incapable of taking the slightest bit of independent action or thought.
Don't confuse responsibility with supervision. Constant supervision is most certainly not a responsible way to raise a child.
(surprisingly, with the Patent office's promise to check their database)
Wow, there's a shocker. I mean, it's simply unfathomable that there may exist patent officers who aren't Shameless Corporate Bribemongers. In fact, I'd recommend you investigate your sources on that one--that is, if I didn't know that the suggestion would fall on deaf ears...
Honestly, folks. Yes, the USPTO has more than it's share of problems, and there are a number of bad apples in the bunch, but it's just snide to exhibit such shock at the thought that there may exist government employees who want to do their job right.
It'd be like me expressing surprise that there might exist a Salshdot editor that doesn't proselytize every time he or she posts a news article.
I hate "journalism" like this. Why even report something using words like "may have". It conveys nothing...Too bad americans are so easily fooled by these weasel words.
"Hey, slow down a bit. That bridge may have iced over."
"Silence, foolish American! You convey nothing! I will not be fooled by your weasel word--*CRUNCH*
Boycotts don't work anymore - at least not against the large multinationals. Want to boycott RJR Nabisco? No more Kraft Mac and Cheeze for you! Disney? May as well turn off the TV. Sony? Forgetabout it. They have their hands in just about every aspect of your life - you may as well forget any form of entertainment you know about. Even if you do manage to hit one business group, the corporation can easily spin this to their own advantage.
"Just turn off the TV." "No more Mac and Cheeze." My goodness, the hell we'd be going through. Please.
Don't confuse "Boycotts don't work anymore" with "People are too lazy to boycott anymore". Do you honestly think that sacrificing your digital toys could even start to compare to the daily hell of not having reliable transportation in an urban area? And yet people have done just that, for months on end, with fairly constant harassment from law enforcement and the rest of the community.
Boycotts are hard. They will affect your daily life, sometimes profoundly. This does not mean, however, that they're no longer possible; it just means that our society doesn't give enough of a damn yet to make their own lives less comfortable.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, really? Tell me, Jonny, from which orifice did you so casually pull that statement?
Allow me to present 78 examples of companies that are each dominating an even more enormous part of the country's economy at this very second.
Of course, I realize that the Fortune 500 is not a foolproof, catch-all guide to measuring a company's worth. You'll understand, though, if I have a tad more faith in it than in baseless rantings...
W e l l ,i tc o u l db ew o r s e . . .
Hoy, you can say that again. Last time I was in The Salt Lake City of Latter Da--I mean, Salt Lake City, my friends and I had to be sponsored members of the club we found just to have a drink and shoot some pool (apparently, local law prohibits the sale of alcohol pretty much everywhere except clubs that maintain a membership list (where everyone must be sponsored by an existing member) and sub-basement N36, Room 101 of the HQ.)
Granted, the club's membership requirements weren't that stiff ("Hey, Steve, wanna sponsor these guys? Sure, Jim!",) but nonetheless...
Speech in Utah takes exactly one approved form, and I don't think I even need to drop the name of the organization that determines what form that is. During this same previous trip, the local press had run a little drivel piece that pointed out, among other things, that even Democrats were made to feel welcome at the local 4th of July parade. (This same article featured a sentence about a particularly precocious youth who had supposedly uttered (with no coaching, heavens no,) "Daddy, what's a Democrat?")
The university is well within its rights (and upholding its duty to instill good moral character within its students) when they treat your site this way.
You'll forgive me for saying this, but anyone who believes that a public university is right to silence dissident student voices in the name of "instilling good moral character within it's students" has a pretty fscked sense of moral character. That includes juvenille insults, as well; if you can't even handle a juvenille insult, well...
This is not about speech. This is not about freedom. This is just a student bitching about the "fascist administration". Nothing to see here; please move along.
Um, that's political speech, if ever I've heard it. Doesn't matter whether or not the kid's a crackpot; it's still protected speech under the Constitution. Now, that the administration saw fit to shut down the site and is seemingly pressing legal charges makes me wonder which side of the argument is playing host to the crackpots, but that's a different matter.
No, no, it's still working fine. There's not a single instance of "(foo) [is|will become] The New (bar)" anywhere in the entire article...
Hey, look--I found a better example, right here under my chair!
Let's say that Bob's Corner Grocery has one aisle of produce and ninteen aisles of kitchen knives. The vast majority of the kitchen knives are stolen property, though purchased by Bob from various distributors (Bob himself wouldn't even think of stealing somebody else's property.) "Heck, I'm no criminal," Bob is fond of saying, "I just sell groceries. It's not any of my business how my suppliers get their goods, now, is it?"
You're the dupe that looks straight into Bob's bewildered, childish eyes and says, "It's OK, Bob. You're not part of the problem. Don't you worry one bit, I still believe in you!" right as the police arrive to drag him downtown.
Napster does indeed give away something you should be paying for. Napster, before it started getting sued, was doing exactly jack and squat to curb the distribution of copyrighted material through it's service. The Napster client app is completely useless without the central server, and Napster is in charge of running that server. It's like saying that the bullet just happened to hit Mr. Doe, and all this poor guy here did was pull the trigger.
If you were to end up dying someday, who should I contact for a refund on my eternal life device?
Thanks in advance,
American AC in Paris
OPERATEUR: ecran principal s'allument.
M. LE CAPTAIN: C'est vous!!!
MICHAEL: Comment allez-vous messieurs.
MICHAEL: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
M. LE CAPTAIN: Quoi vous dites!?
MICHAEL: Vous etes dans le chemin à la destruction.
MICHAEL: Vous avez pas du chance pour survivre faites votre temps.
MICHAEL: Ah-hau hau hau hau.
Because wouldn't it really, really suck if some alien society like the frigin' Vogons beat us to becoming the custodians of the universe?
Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. I hold that we can't afford to continue this pattern of knowledge seeking and loss of innocence any further.
Well, I wish you godspeed in your pursuit. What little knowledge you still harbor seems to be causing you more pain than bliss.
I do hope you'll forgive me if I pursue a life of folly, though...
(Counter-troll: your first sentence, taken in the context of the non-pursuit of knowledge, is absolutely golden.)
Y'know, I feel kinda stupid pointing this out, but there is exactly one reason why fast food is at the epedemic level Katz keeps telling us it is.
People buy it.
Scream all you want about how mom 'n' pop's Greasy Spoon Cafe just closed down, or how 2/3 of the US population is now approaching dangerous levels of obesity, or how these companies are spreading overseas (and *gasp* succeeding!), but they've become so powerful because lots and lots of people buy their product.
Fast food is cheap, fast, (debatably) tasty, easy to access, and the same no matter where you go. For some completely inexplicable reason, people seem to like this, and subsequently keep pouring cash into McDonald's coffers for their 10-minute Big Mac Extra Value Meal lunch.
So now that fast food restaurants have proven their popularity (and that they're not going away anytime soon,) it's the fault of the corporation that society is going down the tubes (at least in Katz's head?) I dare you, Jon, to consider that the root of this problem may just be the millions of Americans who regularly and voluntarily patronize fast food restaurants instead of independant restaurants.
If the fast food corporations have become a giant, international, all-consuming monster, it's because millions of ordinary people keep happily flinging their money into the mouth of the beast.
Joe Q. Slashdotter is to blame; he goes out, buys CDs/DVDs, eats fast food, watches cable/sattelite TV, buys the fastest residential broadband connection he can, and owns the latest cell phone on the market. Then, once at work, he's crying all the way to the submit button about the crimes against humanity committed by the MPAA, RIAA, TW/AOL, McDonalds, the telcoms, and pretty much anything with an international headquarters.
Why not do your next earth-shattering exposé on the nauseating hypocracy of the average Slashdot reader, Jon?
No kudos whatsoever to those who for years refused to even consider honoring Hormel's quite reasonable requests regarding the use of the SPAM trademark.
After years of sticking to your guns and standing up for what you believe in, you've finally beaten the good guys. Go, team.
My favorite quote "The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four". Rock on CNN!
Well, Taco, at least CNN didn't misspell the friggin' front-page headline ...
Um, no.
To paraphrase somebody else, "Lawyers don't sue people, plaintiffs sue people." Frivilous lawsuits exist because ordinary people bring idiotic things to court.
Plaintiffs are allowed to pres idiotic charges because any attempt to weed out "idiotic" lawsuits would be instantly and vehemently attacked by many people (in all likelihood, yourself included) as an attempt to strip ordinary people of their rights (which it would be.)
Now go on out and play in the street like a good little troll.
That was all good.
The big American company I worked for then bought up a smaller American company and sent me to work there.
That was all good, too.
Then, the big American company that had bought up the smaller American company I was working for was bought up by an even bigger British company.
Still, all good.
Today, I'm a contractor in Paris for the French division of the huge British company that purchased the big American company that had purchased the little American company at which I once worked.
Peace.
(on a serious note, find a multinational, work a while in the States, and get a transfer. Easiest route to take. Further, if you want to come to France, be prepared for a 6 to 12 month tooth-and-nail grudge match to get your work papers. In French. Britian is a cake walk in comparison.)
Rob, not to sound old-fashioned or anything, but you've got a wicked skewed sense of 'long time'. Useable portable MP3 players have only been around for a few years; the Tivo is even younger. These things are developing at breakneck speeds; the odds that within five years your coveted "Borg Box" won't exist as you imagine it today are pretty low.
Five years from now, when you're holding the "Ultimate" (by today's standards) Borg Box in your hands, you're going to be wondering, "Yeah, but why haven't they developed one of these that integrates <insert hottest technology here> yet? And how come it only holds 12,000 hours of video? My computer can do six times that!"
Technology takes time to mature, and quite frankly, I'd call the pace at which this stuff is developing at nothing short of blazing. Bear in mind that only a decade ago, having anything over 256 colors for your PC was something to brag about, and that a decent SGI workstation from five years ago would be hard-pressed to handle a game of Tribes 2, and that just two years ago you would've had to have used an old-fashined VCR to record the N'Sync Marathon.
Give it some time.
You said it! And it'll be hysteria-inducing when we go from almost 2 GHz to 4 in the next eighteen to twenty-four months!
Yowza! I'll believe it when I see it!
Oh, come on. Is it possible that once, maybe just this once, it doesn't really make sense to try and pin the Open Source Medal on this to make it even more 133t and k3w1? But hey, while you're at it, you should probably mention that you can use mathematics on Linux, too, and that it runs perfectly on both Gnome and KDE, no less! And I heard that ESR uses it, like, every day!
That aside, the concept of "open vs. closed" applies to mathematics about as much as it applies to C++. Mathematics is a tool. There is nothing that says that the inventor of a revolutionary mathematical equation must then make her knowledge available to the world. She would be just as free to form a company that charges insanely high consulting fees to process data using her secret formula as she could post it on her webpage for all the world to use freely.
While it's true that the vast majority of all mathematical knowledge is freely available to anyone who cares to look at it, that doesn't make the concepts of "open source" and "closed source" applicable to mathematics itself.
But there are people out there firmly conviced that liberal attitudes about sex are perfectly healthy, and that pornography is in some way "expressive" and "naturual". Please tell me, what is natural about some woman being brutally sodomized by several men on camera?
Well, first off, I'd recommend calling brutal sodomy "morally reprehensible", as it is arguably a perfectly natural act (though, again, generally held as morally reprehensible.)
There are people out there firmly entrenched in the belief that conservative attitudes about sex are both healthier and morally higher, and that pornography is somehow "deviant" and "unnatural". These same people generally feel perfectly justified in pointing towards the most deviant, reprehensible acts of violent, aberrant behavior as prime examples of what pornography is. This is unfair.
It'd be somewhat akin to me calling Christianity a horrible, disgusting cult which has mercilessly slaughtered countless women and children over centuries in the name of appeasing an unseen deity. I'd be ignoring the fact that some of the world's greatest and most generous groups and individuals have acted out of their love of the Christian god. There is no "so, which is it, then?" It's both. Should we outlaw Christianity or claim that it's the most wonderfullest thing ever? Neither. It has both good and bad elements, people who respect it and people who abuse it.
The same holds true for pornography. While you are quick to point out that having people abused into pornography and tortured in front of a camera is (surprise) bad, the same moral compass cannot be used to denounce, say, a video made willingly (and happily) by a married couple for distribution in adult video stores. What is so unnatural (or rather, morally reprehensible) about that?
Don't confuse unnatural with unique. Writing is perfectly natural, and we are the only species on the planet (AFAIK/as far as we can tell so far) that communicates using written language. How is writing unnatural when it is the product of nothing but purely biological thought processes? (Yes, yes, apologies to those that believe that humankind was endowed with the ability to write by monolith/aliens/divine providence/etc.)
In regard to whether a keyboard or pen is more "natural" for writing, consider this:
- A pen and paper/writing media consist of two parts. The writer uses the pen to trace out the patterns of which characters he or she wishes to write using the pen. The strokes of the pen are displayed on the paper/writing media.
- A keyboard is of a device with many keys (let's say 105,) and a number of which have rather abstract functions (shift, shift/caps lock, return--not to mention the control keys used on most computers.) The user presses the keys in sequence to form words and sentences, and the result is displayed by the output mechanism (screen, paper, etc.)
Now, while it is true that one will generally be far more productive with a keyboard than a pen (upon attaining a reasonable level of mastery,) a pen is decidedly less complex of an interface to get used to. In a purely empirical sense, it is easier to learn how to use an interfafce with one element as opposed to scores of elements. Again, I'm not trying to claim that pens are better than keyboards; I think they're worse. pens are slow, create inconsistent results (which vary widely between individuals), and are generally more prone to physical failure than keyboards. But they are easier to use. That, and they're a lot easier to make, as even the cheapest keyboard costs about five dollars more than a finger and some dust.Information should be entered into a computer directly with a thought. Evaluating the thought context is what they should concentrate on.
Pssh. We shouldn't even need to enter information into computers; they should be able to do it themselves, thanks to amazingly powerful AI routines. But then again, that isn't even close to reality yet, nor are thought-controlled computers.
Hmm. You should probably stop using AOL, then. I mean, if you're not satisfied with the service that they provide, you really just stop using their service completely. Then, their zany shenanigans won't even matter to you.
Oh, you're under the impression that you're not using AOL when you use the AIM and ICQ networks, aren't you?
At the risk of sounding like a total ass, cry me a friggin' river. Don't like the fact that AOL changes things on services that they own and they maintain? Don't use them! How, exactly, did you get it in your head that AOL is somehow duty bound to let you use their free service with whatever software you want?
Cut off from the people you talk to? Well, looks like you have two choices, then: swallow your pride (careful not to choke) and use the evil, nasty, icky AIM client, or convince all your friends to join you on #AOheLl5uX0rZrocks for great justice.
My, but I've overlooked a third option: bitch an moan about it and propagate the idea that we need yet another antitrust lawsuit setting yet another Really, Really Bad Precedent in the tech industry. Brilliant idea. Do you like the idea of companies (and OS projects) not being free to make changes to their own systems without first going through some n-month-long review and notice period? Because that's what you're talking about. A successful antitrust case would hurt AOL directly, but it would also set a really, really unpleasant precedent for anyone else looking to create an IM network.
The road to victory for Open Source is not paved with lawsuits and anti-trust cases. That struggle will ultimately be won by the side that can pump more money and better lawyers into the legal system. The Open Source movement will win, if it does, by producing better, faster and cheaper software than Closed Source can. Instead of complaining about your inability to run free in a Closed IM network, focus instead on contributing to an Open one. Then you won't ever need to worry about being on the receiving end of cheap tricks.
I used to go off into the woods, unsupervised, in grade school.
I used to walk home from school, unsupervised, almost every day.
I sat on my bed and read books, unsupervised.
I climbed trees, unsupervised.
I played video games, unsupervised.
I programmed my old Apple IIe, unsupervised.
I rode my bike all over the neighborhood for entire afternoons, unsupervised.
I played baseball in the street, unsupervised.
I went to the public library, unsupervised.
Yet I'd laugh in your face if you even to even suggest that my parents were negligent. My parents raised me to be an individual with a spirit and responsibilities of my own. I cannot even begin to express how glad I am that they did not tower over me every waking minute of the day. I wouldn't have grown into a person; I would have become a spineless, simpering cur, incapable of taking the slightest bit of independent action or thought.
Don't confuse responsibility with supervision. Constant supervision is most certainly not a responsible way to raise a child.
Wow, there's a shocker. I mean, it's simply unfathomable that there may exist patent officers who aren't Shameless Corporate Bribemongers. In fact, I'd recommend you investigate your sources on that one--that is, if I didn't know that the suggestion would fall on deaf ears...
Honestly, folks. Yes, the USPTO has more than it's share of problems, and there are a number of bad apples in the bunch, but it's just snide to exhibit such shock at the thought that there may exist government employees who want to do their job right.
It'd be like me expressing surprise that there might exist a Salshdot editor that doesn't proselytize every time he or she posts a news article.
"Hey, slow down a bit. That bridge may have iced over."
"Silence, foolish American! You convey nothing! I will not be fooled by your weasel word--*CRUNCH*
Horsepucky. Boycotts work, but only when people realy want them to. Boycotting something like like RJR or the MPAA is a cakewalk compared to, say, boycotting the only economically viable method of getting around your city.
"Just turn off the TV." "No more Mac and Cheeze." My goodness, the hell we'd be going through. Please.
Don't confuse "Boycotts don't work anymore" with "People are too lazy to boycott anymore". Do you honestly think that sacrificing your digital toys could even start to compare to the daily hell of not having reliable transportation in an urban area? And yet people have done just that, for months on end, with fairly constant harassment from law enforcement and the rest of the community.
Boycotts are hard. They will affect your daily life, sometimes profoundly. This does not mean, however, that they're no longer possible; it just means that our society doesn't give enough of a damn yet to make their own lives less comfortable.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB
not
THEY SET US UP THE BOMB
Sheesh. k1dZ.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.