It seems to me like this is simple economics. They're just trying to get more bang for their customer's bucks. If you don't like it, go somewhere else to buy your stuff. After all, a computer is a necessity for my job, but a luxury in my personal life. The airline ticket analogy other previous posters have mentioned is a perfect example of how normal this really is.
Can we mod down this whole story submission as -1 Troll (or maybe Flamebait)?
Cheating has always been a part of gaming. Isn't that a 'fair use' of the game you've bought? You're not selling your cheats, and you're not claiming the original game as your own. I think cheating is the same as making MP3's out of all the CD's you own. Sure, I don't like playing with cheaters because it reduces the fun factor because there is no longer skill involved for the one cheating, but I don't think you should be revoking the ability to play the game just cause you figured out a way to cheat. And if you really want to not play with cheaters, find a server that really frowns upon cheaters, and kicks them off quickly. You can play with your tight knit circle of friends, and the rest of us can play with a bunch of other people from around the world. No big deal.
Having said all that, if your post was meant as humor, I do get a chuckle out of it when read with that in mind.:)
Why? Cristopher Columbus had faith that the world was not flat. Einstein somehow knew that time and space were inter-related, but didn't know it as truth before his work in the theories of relativity. And yet, they were later proven to be truths. Further refinements of existing truths at least. Time existed, space existed, but they were until Einstein, not inter-related. How can his faith in things not proven, be false?
I realize he's not a journalist. That's why I go read the sites he's linked his stories to. That's why I check out everything the slashdot guys post as newsworthy. Maybe they are spinning something their way, which after reading the story, I may not agree with their take on it. That's why they don't hold themselves accountable for any of their reader's posts on this site. It's free for everyone to discuss, they just provide the topics, usually with a quick sentence about how they feel. They should not be held to any journalistic standards any more than the rest of us posting to these discussions.
But even slashdot shows how the majority of people will act in the real world. Consider this:
1) Look through any discussion on slashdot that involves even a little bit of creation vs. evolution argument. The creationists are usually modded down pretty quickly. The rest are modded up.
2) Meta-moderation. Those who have posted enough and been modded up for their 'agreeable' thoughts on subjects, as determined by the masses, are given the right to keep those doing the agreeing, in check, to make sure they're agreeing or disagreeing to the same things.
Back on topic now. We all 'agree' that Scientology is bad, and mod posts agreeing with it, down. But, we as geeks, are a minority in the world. So the opposite has happened in the world, no one really cares, so they let Scientology's practices continue unabated.
How do we make a difference?
I do not know yet. I'm not saying slashdot's moderation system is bad. It filter's out some of the noise, like first post flames which is good. But it also filter's out some very different viewpoints that the majority does not agree with. This can be bad.
My only solution would be to look into Jesus Christ and what he did to save the world from it's sins, and from disunity with our fellow man.
But the irony here is that because of that little sentence I just wrote, I will automatically be labeled a 'fundamentalist Bible-thumping, condemning Christian' who has no love for anyone but people like me. This post will also most likely be modded down without regard to anything else I have written because I am now thus labeled. This in fact, is not the complete truth about who I am. It would surprise me if this post actually was modded up at this point because most people will have already judged who I am and disregarded my thoughts as mindless jabber from a 'Christian'. But what if Christians, or Muslims, or Scientologists, or Hindu's were the majority? Would your lack of belief in their system get you modded down too?
Usually when a movie goes straight to video tape, it means it did poorly in the movie theatres because IT SUCKED! So if the movie industry doesn't want to worry about people copying their movies at all, don't release it on videotape, DVD, etc. Of course, they make less money that way, but that's really the argument here, right? Why isn't the movie industry making even more money than they're already making? Boo-hoo for them. I believe even the movie set boy grips and other 'go-get-this' slaves make more than the average American. I doubt their 'need' to make even more money off their 'works' is justifiable.
And as for art, I have seen some government sponsored art projects in my own city of Dublin, OH (the cornfield for those of you from Columbus, OH), that truly SUCK! I sure wouldn't have paid for art like it, but apparently my local government thinks it was a good idea. (BTW - I've never heard anyone say how they thought this local art was 'art', but rather just laughter at the ridiculous waste of money that it is).
Copyright is a good thing for the small guy. It's a bad thing when in the hands of the big boys because it's used as the club of intellectual bludgeoning. Having said that, copyright law is now outdated and needs reworked, or restricted to use by individuals alone, not for use by corps. My $3,000 would barely hire one lawyer to fight a corp with millions at its disposal when fighting for my IP rights these days.
I don't think it will be that much longer before something like this could be passed as law in the UN. 20 years ago everyone laughed at the possibility of ever uniting Europe under one currency or government. The EU is well on it's way to uniting Europe now, though.
(China is a great example of this, BTW-- 90% of the OSs sold are pirated copies of Windows, and of the legit OSs, 99.5% are Linux...).
For those that can't read between the lines: This is because Linux can be obtained for free, but businesses will still purchase copies when necessary for the support and customization that the Linux company can provide to the business. The same would hold true here in the US, but I'm sure the number of illegal Windows copies is lower. We're moving towards the Service Age now, the Information Age is already waning (in my opinion).
Not everybody has the luxuries of both Internet access and free time to worry about such things.
If someone is being that lazy as to not think about their fellow man and more importantly, their fellow US citizen, why should I care for them? This is the kind of "I'm a victim, give me" mentality that is way too prevalent in today's American culture. I care about what affects my neighbors, friends, and family, which is why I vote, and why it's my responsibility to think about, and act on, such things! Freedom is not a luxury, it takes work. And if that means caring about the laws your government is trying to push on you, then you need to work at taking time to care for such things. Even if it means taking a day off work, and lose a precious days' wages, to go protest at your local or national courthouse.
Didn't today's earlier story regarding anti-matter/matter creation answer this question. The existence of anti-matter is quite obvious to the naked eye.
First, a conspiracy is an attempt to cover up the truth, but in this context it doesn't really fit. Technically it does, but we're talking about mob style criminal acts. And like they stated in the article, it could have just been informants on Sprint's side that were helping to facilitate this call routing scheme, so it is quite possible that they knew not to re-route calls when Sprint went to test them.
Second, should we expect anything less than a seedy underbelly to all in the 'City of Sin'?
For the last two years (at least, I've only been here 3), my company I work for has done presentations on security risks to our IT infrastructure. These presentations have been more of a "How do you prevent X from happening.", but do cater to informing the non-IT workers how to protect our data, and their own. I think they have been good wake up calls, even to me, and I work in an IT environment of the company. But certain issues that the regular Joe brings up in the meetings do get addressed and are taken very seriously by our Security folks. If your company isn't having meetings regarding IT security these days, you're missing the boat!
Quick synopsis for people: Observation and models had shown that there is an equal chance for matter and anti-matter to be created from energy.
So where did the energy to create matter or anti-matter come from? -- This is the next logical step in reasoning. So why are we really trying to prove how the universe came into existance? Let's do something useful with this data, like try to determine how to harness the power of this observation to better our scientific endeavours. Science fails in trying to prove 'the meaning of life and how it came about', but it does do a great job at improving our knowledge of physical life, the cosmos, and the forces involved in the present. Let's use it for those purposes, and not in trying to create yet another theory for how life came to be in the past.
Well, I wasn't going to dive into other topics off the subject of C-14 dating, but you are correct. But my ideology still remains. We cannot know for certain what the climatology of the planet was like more than say, 10,000 yrs ago with any great degree of certainty, because there are no written records of it.
Sure we can infer certain things about past climatology, and use that for a basis on how to 'age' things based on C-14 dating, half-life decay, etc., but that still does not mean that it is even accurate. The reason for this is because it may be possible that the 'data' (be they geological, atmospherical, molecular, etc.) may have been 'recorded' in a different manner than that which we see today. There may be so many parts per million of carbon in living things for the past 10,000 years, but past that maybe the parts per million were drastically different. Basically, I find that it is scientifically irresponsible to look backwards in time past about 10,000 yrs because we have no data to tell us of the conditions at that time in an accurate manner. I'm just saying that at a certain point you have to take either the creationist or evolutionary theories based on faith alone 'cause no one was there to witness it and test theories based on observable phenomena.
I learned that C-14 dating was not a reliable method of dating materials past several thousand years, at best, way back in high school. That's right, I went to a private school, where we had smart teachers who cared, and up to date textbooks. It's no wonder that this makes headline news, because most of the unfortunate masses did not have the chance to get an education better than public education. (Which you must agree, our public education system is in a very sorry state of affairs these days).
That's why I'm always rather leary of basing any of the evolutionists or creationists theories on just how old something is based on the C-14 method. Chalk this 'news-worthy' item up to a poor American educational system, because it's not news to me.
I would GLADLY pay several hundred dollars each for a good linux web browser and mail client!
Yikes! And I thought Linux users liked free stuff. You must have lots-o'-money, 'cause even if Netscape, Mozilla, and Konquerer all don't work perfectly, I would still rather use them then shell out hundreds for programs that "work perfectly". Isn't that the M$ Mantra anyways, sell stuff at high prices that are supposed to be the best thing out there, when in reality it still bites: *cough* Outlook *cough*?
A friend uses this strategy for people saying they've already got a stock broker (my friend is a broker):
My friend: "Mr. Smith, I'm not asking you to fire your current broker, I'm just asking you to invest through my company on this particular stock/bond/etc."
He tells me it works pretty well, but not all the time. I would think the same would work when telling companies why they have security holes:
"Company X, we don't want you to abandon your previous contracts and decisions. What we would like is to help you build a more secure system using some of our development talent. Here are security holes that the previous company has not fixed, and we would like to provide you with some solutions for fixing said holes."
If nothing else, it leaves a good impression with Company X because they know you want to help and get the job, but not at the expense of reworking their entire system of doing things.
DOH! I feel for you teach. But just realize that when they get into the business world, cheaters definitely do not prosper, at least not for very long. I may have not had the greatest grades in school, but I was honest about what I did learn. To date, I've never lost a job because of poor performance or lack of knowledge. Quite the opposite actually. Don't worry, her actions will catch up to her eventually.
As for attacking plagirism using tech, I think that's a useful idea. It won't eliminate the problem, but it will discourage such theft of IP. This makes for a very interesting argument FOR consortiums like the RIAA. Not that I like them, but it is a good example of IP being trampled, even if not in a purely legal sense, but in an implied sense.
The new new economy apparently consists of companies that use lawsuits as their primary source of income.
I know this is off-topic, but wasn't that precedent set by our own US gov. when we sued the tobacco companies for half a trillion flippin' dollars! Companies these days are just following a precedent set by our last administration. Not to bash democrats, but Clinton really let that get out of control. He was the leader, and should have recognized the possibly very negative consequences of such actions. And as for consequences to actions: let's just hope the big George W quits bowing to Chinese business interests, and soon! We'll all have to buy cheap Chinese made crap products in a few years, and accept the occasional nuking to keep us in line if he doesn't.
That'd be funny. The yahoo article did say "destruction of products owned by the defendants", though, so I wouldn't worry about your personal CDRW drive motor too much.
What's funnier still, if this actually becomes a reality, just think of all the CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives that companies will start selling off for pennies on the dollar just to get rid of inventory and at least recoup a little bit of their costs before the men in black come to destroy it all. Both companies will end up screwing themselves over! DVD and CD-RW makers will lose money on their inventory they had to sell off for cheap, and Magnecrap will then have tons more individuals with 'illegal' devices in their hands. Oh yeah, and then the RIAA will have to contend with even more people copying songs and making CD's with their new CD-RW drives! Muhahaha!
It's hilarious to think of the possibilities of all this copyright/patent lawsuit BS coming back to bite *them* in the butt.
Definitely not by next summer. I've read about this possiblity for a couple years now at least. The main problem seems to be the amount of carbon to make the tubules. I'm not going to go into a whole discussion of the materials needed, but I know that to make such a 'space elevator' would take so much resources that it would not be feasible with just the materials found on the earth using current methods of carbon nano-tube construction. At least, not yet.
While I do think you need a good business plan to start up something big, this guy can start small. In fact, if he knows many people in that rural town he can grab a few friends to help get it started and test things for him. Educational for all, and maybe they'll become partners in the Next Big Thing! After all, it takes someone with balls of steel and a love for risk to be an entrepenaur. He's certainly not going to do it if he tries to think through every last possibility. That's part of the excitement of starting a new business.
I thought wireless is limited by distance availability? For a rural area, especially the untamed outback like Australia, you would have difficulty reaching most of the customer base. Maybe if you want to bounce around from house to house on some sort of yet unheard of P2P wireless connection, but I doubt that would work out too well. I'm not an expert on the whole 'How To Start an ISP', but my guess would be that Wireless is not the way to go for a rural area.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we mod down this whole story submission as -1 Troll (or maybe Flamebait)?
I guess the guy never played 'Lemonade Stand' in grade school on the school's Apple IIE. :)
Having said all that, if your post was meant as humor, I do get a chuckle out of it when read with that in mind. :)
Lumberjacks are EVIL!
Why? Cristopher Columbus had faith that the world was not flat. Einstein somehow knew that time and space were inter-related, but didn't know it as truth before his work in the theories of relativity. And yet, they were later proven to be truths. Further refinements of existing truths at least. Time existed, space existed, but they were until Einstein, not inter-related. How can his faith in things not proven, be false?
Still, it's scary that despite this view of what slashdot is, the CoS was able to bully them into removing a reader's comments as noted in this post: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/16/1256226.shtm l
1) Look through any discussion on slashdot that involves even a little bit of creation vs. evolution argument. The creationists are usually modded down pretty quickly. The rest are modded up.
2) Meta-moderation. Those who have posted enough and been modded up for their 'agreeable' thoughts on subjects, as determined by the masses, are given the right to keep those doing the agreeing, in check, to make sure they're agreeing or disagreeing to the same things.
Back on topic now. We all 'agree' that Scientology is bad, and mod posts agreeing with it, down. But, we as geeks, are a minority in the world. So the opposite has happened in the world, no one really cares, so they let Scientology's practices continue unabated.
How do we make a difference?
I do not know yet. I'm not saying slashdot's moderation system is bad. It filter's out some of the noise, like first post flames which is good. But it also filter's out some very different viewpoints that the majority does not agree with. This can be bad.
My only solution would be to look into Jesus Christ and what he did to save the world from it's sins, and from disunity with our fellow man.
But the irony here is that because of that little sentence I just wrote, I will automatically be labeled a 'fundamentalist Bible-thumping, condemning Christian' who has no love for anyone but people like me. This post will also most likely be modded down without regard to anything else I have written because I am now thus labeled. This in fact, is not the complete truth about who I am. It would surprise me if this post actually was modded up at this point because most people will have already judged who I am and disregarded my thoughts as mindless jabber from a 'Christian'. But what if Christians, or Muslims, or Scientologists, or Hindu's were the majority? Would your lack of belief in their system get you modded down too?
And as for art, I have seen some government sponsored art projects in my own city of Dublin, OH (the cornfield for those of you from Columbus, OH), that truly SUCK! I sure wouldn't have paid for art like it, but apparently my local government thinks it was a good idea. (BTW - I've never heard anyone say how they thought this local art was 'art', but rather just laughter at the ridiculous waste of money that it is).
Copyright is a good thing for the small guy. It's a bad thing when in the hands of the big boys because it's used as the club of intellectual bludgeoning. Having said that, copyright law is now outdated and needs reworked, or restricted to use by individuals alone, not for use by corps. My $3,000 would barely hire one lawyer to fight a corp with millions at its disposal when fighting for my IP rights these days.
I don't think it will be that much longer before something like this could be passed as law in the UN. 20 years ago everyone laughed at the possibility of ever uniting Europe under one currency or government. The EU is well on it's way to uniting Europe now, though.
For those that can't read between the lines: This is because Linux can be obtained for free, but businesses will still purchase copies when necessary for the support and customization that the Linux company can provide to the business. The same would hold true here in the US, but I'm sure the number of illegal Windows copies is lower. We're moving towards the Service Age now, the Information Age is already waning (in my opinion).
If someone is being that lazy as to not think about their fellow man and more importantly, their fellow US citizen, why should I care for them? This is the kind of "I'm a victim, give me" mentality that is way too prevalent in today's American culture. I care about what affects my neighbors, friends, and family, which is why I vote, and why it's my responsibility to think about, and act on, such things! Freedom is not a luxury, it takes work. And if that means caring about the laws your government is trying to push on you, then you need to work at taking time to care for such things. Even if it means taking a day off work, and lose a precious days' wages, to go protest at your local or national courthouse.
Didn't today's earlier story regarding anti-matter/matter creation answer this question. The existence of anti-matter is quite obvious to the naked eye.
Second, should we expect anything less than a seedy underbelly to all in the 'City of Sin'?
For the last two years (at least, I've only been here 3), my company I work for has done presentations on security risks to our IT infrastructure. These presentations have been more of a "How do you prevent X from happening.", but do cater to informing the non-IT workers how to protect our data, and their own. I think they have been good wake up calls, even to me, and I work in an IT environment of the company. But certain issues that the regular Joe brings up in the meetings do get addressed and are taken very seriously by our Security folks. If your company isn't having meetings regarding IT security these days, you're missing the boat!
So where did the energy to create matter or anti-matter come from? -- This is the next logical step in reasoning. So why are we really trying to prove how the universe came into existance? Let's do something useful with this data, like try to determine how to harness the power of this observation to better our scientific endeavours. Science fails in trying to prove 'the meaning of life and how it came about', but it does do a great job at improving our knowledge of physical life, the cosmos, and the forces involved in the present. Let's use it for those purposes, and not in trying to create yet another theory for how life came to be in the past.
Sure we can infer certain things about past climatology, and use that for a basis on how to 'age' things based on C-14 dating, half-life decay, etc., but that still does not mean that it is even accurate. The reason for this is because it may be possible that the 'data' (be they geological, atmospherical, molecular, etc.) may have been 'recorded' in a different manner than that which we see today. There may be so many parts per million of carbon in living things for the past 10,000 years, but past that maybe the parts per million were drastically different. Basically, I find that it is scientifically irresponsible to look backwards in time past about 10,000 yrs because we have no data to tell us of the conditions at that time in an accurate manner. I'm just saying that at a certain point you have to take either the creationist or evolutionary theories based on faith alone 'cause no one was there to witness it and test theories based on observable phenomena.
That's why I'm always rather leary of basing any of the evolutionists or creationists theories on just how old something is based on the C-14 method. Chalk this 'news-worthy' item up to a poor American educational system, because it's not news to me.
Yikes! And I thought Linux users liked free stuff. You must have lots-o'-money, 'cause even if Netscape, Mozilla, and Konquerer all don't work perfectly, I would still rather use them then shell out hundreds for programs that "work perfectly". Isn't that the M$ Mantra anyways, sell stuff at high prices that are supposed to be the best thing out there, when in reality it still bites: *cough* Outlook *cough*?
My friend: "Mr. Smith, I'm not asking you to fire your current broker, I'm just asking you to invest through my company on this particular stock/bond/etc."
He tells me it works pretty well, but not all the time. I would think the same would work when telling companies why they have security holes:
"Company X, we don't want you to abandon your previous contracts and decisions. What we would like is to help you build a more secure system using some of our development talent. Here are security holes that the previous company has not fixed, and we would like to provide you with some solutions for fixing said holes."
If nothing else, it leaves a good impression with Company X because they know you want to help and get the job, but not at the expense of reworking their entire system of doing things.
As for attacking plagirism using tech, I think that's a useful idea. It won't eliminate the problem, but it will discourage such theft of IP. This makes for a very interesting argument FOR consortiums like the RIAA. Not that I like them, but it is a good example of IP being trampled, even if not in a purely legal sense, but in an implied sense.
I know this is off-topic, but wasn't that precedent set by our own US gov. when we sued the tobacco companies for half a trillion flippin' dollars! Companies these days are just following a precedent set by our last administration. Not to bash democrats, but Clinton really let that get out of control. He was the leader, and should have recognized the possibly very negative consequences of such actions. And as for consequences to actions: let's just hope the big George W quits bowing to Chinese business interests, and soon! We'll all have to buy cheap Chinese made crap products in a few years, and accept the occasional nuking to keep us in line if he doesn't.
What's funnier still, if this actually becomes a reality, just think of all the CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives that companies will start selling off for pennies on the dollar just to get rid of inventory and at least recoup a little bit of their costs before the men in black come to destroy it all. Both companies will end up screwing themselves over! DVD and CD-RW makers will lose money on their inventory they had to sell off for cheap, and Magnecrap will then have tons more individuals with 'illegal' devices in their hands. Oh yeah, and then the RIAA will have to contend with even more people copying songs and making CD's with their new CD-RW drives! Muhahaha!
It's hilarious to think of the possibilities of all this copyright/patent lawsuit BS coming back to bite *them* in the butt.
Definitely not by next summer. I've read about this possiblity for a couple years now at least. The main problem seems to be the amount of carbon to make the tubules. I'm not going to go into a whole discussion of the materials needed, but I know that to make such a 'space elevator' would take so much resources that it would not be feasible with just the materials found on the earth using current methods of carbon nano-tube construction. At least, not yet.
While I do think you need a good business plan to start up something big, this guy can start small. In fact, if he knows many people in that rural town he can grab a few friends to help get it started and test things for him. Educational for all, and maybe they'll become partners in the Next Big Thing! After all, it takes someone with balls of steel and a love for risk to be an entrepenaur. He's certainly not going to do it if he tries to think through every last possibility. That's part of the excitement of starting a new business.
I thought wireless is limited by distance availability? For a rural area, especially the untamed outback like Australia, you would have difficulty reaching most of the customer base. Maybe if you want to bounce around from house to house on some sort of yet unheard of P2P wireless connection, but I doubt that would work out too well. I'm not an expert on the whole 'How To Start an ISP', but my guess would be that Wireless is not the way to go for a rural area.