OMFG, yet another unbelievable joke headline. I mean, this is about as likely to happen as, say, ummm... telling us Captain Kirk is going to host a Japanese cooking show. Sheesh.
Y'know, today would be a perfect day for Microsoft to buy Novell, or ZDNet to buy Andover, or some such other silly shit, because it would take an entire quarter before anybody read the SEC filings and figured out it wasn't a joke.
In other news, Bruce Springsteen found dead in Natalie Portman's condo of an overdose of hot grits. Police are holding a transient who goes by the name of Cowboy Neal as a material witness, but insist he isn't a suspect.
Maybe the guy who built the spray-foam PC in the earlier Slashdot article could coat the whole mess with this stuff too. Add some 802.11b and it'd be completely self contained. A little spray paint, and voila!
Everybody must buy this DVD, even if it won't play in your region. Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti need all the money they can get to combat evil movie pirates.
I was originally going to post to correct you on your spelling of the word "capitolism", thinking you instead meant "capitalism". The word "capitalism" derives from the word "capital", meaning money, as in "raising capital". "Capitol", on the other hand, is the seat of government for a geographic area. But the more I thought about what you posted, even if it was a misspelling, your use of "capitolism" was more correct. This legal stupidity has everything to do with government control, and damned little to do with earning an honest buck.
I don't need a self-healing computer nearly as much as I need a self-painting house and a self-mowing lawn. And my wife could sure as heck use a self-fueling car.
I remember reading usenet (and maybe even Slashdot) posts from WebTV employees after they got sucked into the Microsoft empire. If memory serves me correctly, there were a lot of complaints that the management organisation at Microsoft was so heavy handed with the new WebTV group that it killed off the division's desire to innovate, and went so far as to strangle their marketing of the product line completely. Lots of people left, and there was a huge talent drain that essentially made WebTV what it is today.
So now I'm wondering, with the merging of the set-top division with the X-Box division, is one group going to feel they've gotten the short end of the stick again? Microsoft's performance beyond the desktop has arguably been less than stellar, so there's already a cloud hanging over these folks.
No wonder there's so much "CRAP" on the market. Dumbasses like you put up with it, you generate demand for it, your low standards are what drives the quality products out of existence, you elect public officials that fail to act against shoddy manufacturers. The proliferation of "CRAP" goods out there is your fault.
There's always alternatives; use your brain. I think most mass-marketed furniture is crap, so I build my own. Real hardwoods, not particle board with a fake wood vinyl veneer, almost always for the same price or less. I know people who grow most of their own fresh foods, write their own software, even build their own houses because they're disgusted with the price and the quality of what's commercially available.
And don't confuse "want" with "need". If it's really "CRAP", you don't need it.
Whatever happened to the good old days, where if a product was notoriously unsafe and insecure, that consumers simply refused to buy the product? The manufacturer's only choice then was to either fix the problems, or cease production.
If we bought cars with the same lack of discern that we buy software, Chevrolet could bring back the Corvair.
I've worked on one of these types of projects at a University. There were so many corporate sponsors and other government agencies, each with their own set of rules governing intellectual property, that it would have been impossible to open-source enough of the project to be of any benefit to anyone.
For the parts I worked on, compiling in "copyrights.c" would sometimes double the size of the object.
The following is from the MacQuarie dictionary. I found it quite amusing.
yahoo noun 1. a rough, coarse or uncouth person. --interjection 2. an exclamation expressing enthusiasm or delight. --phrase 3. yahoo around, to act in a rough, loutish manner. [from Yahoo, one of a race of brutes having the form of human beings and embodying all the degrading passions of humanity, in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift]
Number three seems to descibe their new business model to a tee.
I vote we name it Gravenreuth, after the lawyer in Germany who got the injunction against SuSE. Then every time this turd's name appears on a public document, sue the shit out of him for trademark violation.
Explain: 1-Skyrocketing tuition. 2-Most colleges and universities are tax exempt.
1. Mine is a four-year state college. Resident tuition is rated as very affordable and, while higher every year, hasn't 'skyrocketed'.
2. State colleges are supported largely by state taxes; my comment had nothing to do with their exempt status. To stay in business, they must either (1) raise tuitions, or (2) siphon off a bigger share of state revenue which will be made up for by higher taxes, or (3) earn income on property they own. The sale and licensing of IP to augment operating expenses is one option that both taxpayers and students in my state prefer.
This is not new. My university has been doing this as far back as I can remember, and they've required signed intellectual property agreements from researchers, staff, students, and contractors who participate in research projects for at least a dozen years now. The formula to decide who owns what percentage of the IP derived from any specific project is complex, but it has to be because of the way projects are funded there. One program I worked on was financed partly by federal funds, by an industry consortium, by an individual donor, and by the university's general fund money. The federal funding came from multiple sources, each with their own IP restrictions. The long and short of it was that if you worked on this project, it was guaranteed that nothing you invented was yours. If I thought up something new and unique and patentable in the shower before I went to work, they owned it, not me.
But I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because the money the university makes off licensing IP is used in part to keep tuitions down and offset taxes. So I can continue to afford classes, and I can live where I live because the tax rates aren't outrageous.
Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard removes Orcs from Warcraft? Big Deal. I'm waiting for the headline that says....
"Slashdot Removes Cowboy Neal from Polls"
Now THAT would be NEWS!
# apt-get humor
connection refused
#
OMFG, yet another unbelievable joke headline. I mean, this is about as likely to happen as, say, ummm... telling us Captain Kirk is going to host a Japanese cooking show. Sheesh.
Y'know, today would be a perfect day for Microsoft to buy Novell, or ZDNet to buy Andover, or some such other silly shit, because it would take an entire quarter before anybody read the SEC filings and figured out it wasn't a joke.
In other news, Bruce Springsteen found dead in Natalie Portman's condo of an overdose of hot grits. Police are holding a transient who goes by the name of Cowboy Neal as a material witness, but insist he isn't a suspect.
Maybe the guy who built the spray-foam PC in the earlier Slashdot article could coat the whole mess with this stuff too. Add some 802.11b and it'd be completely self contained. A little spray paint, and voila!
Cyber-turd.
(ghostly voice heard over the earphone....)
"Ick, he tastes awful, not pleasant like Jimmy or Bobby or... or... or even Samantha."
Be satisfied with the funny smile, mate.
Schroedinger's cat may have sacrificed its life to make this product a reality. Or maybe not. Only Heisenberg knows for sure.
[...] dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said.
No doubt Jack was referring to the original work here, and not the copy.
If they're proposing a tax on innovation, I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about.
Then this must mean... Martha Stewart is God!
Everybody must buy this DVD, even if it won't play in your region. Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti need all the money they can get to combat evil movie pirates.
Just trying to burn off karma.
I was originally going to post to correct you on your spelling of the word "capitolism", thinking you instead meant "capitalism". The word "capitalism" derives from the word "capital", meaning money, as in "raising capital". "Capitol", on the other hand, is the seat of government for a geographic area. But the more I thought about what you posted, even if it was a misspelling, your use of "capitolism" was more correct. This legal stupidity has everything to do with government control, and damned little to do with earning an honest buck.
I don't need a self-healing computer nearly as much as I need a self-painting house and a self-mowing lawn. And my wife could sure as heck use a self-fueling car.
Nice idea, but personally I'm going to hold out on buying one of these until they've developed a nudie-bar add-on.
Just another criminal hanging on the Post Office wall. What's so unusual about that?
I remember reading usenet (and maybe even Slashdot) posts from WebTV employees after they got sucked into the Microsoft empire. If memory serves me correctly, there were a lot of complaints that the management organisation at Microsoft was so heavy handed with the new WebTV group that it killed off the division's desire to innovate, and went so far as to strangle their marketing of the product line completely. Lots of people left, and there was a huge talent drain that essentially made WebTV what it is today.
So now I'm wondering, with the merging of the set-top division with the X-Box division, is one group going to feel they've gotten the short end of the stick again? Microsoft's performance beyond the desktop has arguably been less than stellar, so there's already a cloud hanging over these folks.
No wonder there's so much "CRAP" on the market. Dumbasses like you put up with it, you generate demand for it, your low standards are what drives the quality products out of existence, you elect public officials that fail to act against shoddy manufacturers. The proliferation of "CRAP" goods out there is your fault.
There's always alternatives; use your brain. I think most mass-marketed furniture is crap, so I build my own. Real hardwoods, not particle board with a fake wood vinyl veneer, almost always for the same price or less. I know people who grow most of their own fresh foods, write their own software, even build their own houses because they're disgusted with the price and the quality of what's commercially available.
And don't confuse "want" with "need". If it's really "CRAP", you don't need it.
Whatever happened to the good old days, where if a product was notoriously unsafe and insecure, that consumers simply refused to buy the product? The manufacturer's only choice then was to either fix the problems, or cease production.
If we bought cars with the same lack of discern that we buy software, Chevrolet could bring back the Corvair.
I've worked on one of these types of projects at a University. There were so many corporate sponsors and other government agencies, each with their own set of rules governing intellectual property, that it would have been impossible to open-source enough of the project to be of any benefit to anyone.
For the parts I worked on, compiling in "copyrights.c" would sometimes double the size of the object.
The following is from the MacQuarie dictionary. I found it quite amusing.
yahoo
noun 1. a rough, coarse or uncouth person. --interjection 2. an exclamation expressing enthusiasm or delight. --phrase 3. yahoo around, to act in a rough, loutish manner. [from Yahoo, one of a race of brutes having the form of human beings and embodying all the degrading passions of humanity, in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift]
Number three seems to descibe their new business model to a tee.
We have a problem. Need to forward this story to my boss, Mr. Nine-Track-Will-Be-Around-Forever guy.
I vote we name it Gravenreuth, after the lawyer in Germany who got the injunction against SuSE. Then every time this turd's name appears on a public document, sue the shit out of him for trademark violation.
The real future of music is my recently purchased beat-up secondhand piano in the living room.
Let's see the RIAA try to do something about that, the greedy bastards.
Explain:
1-Skyrocketing tuition.
2-Most colleges and universities are tax exempt.
1. Mine is a four-year state college. Resident tuition is rated as very affordable and, while higher every year, hasn't 'skyrocketed'.
2. State colleges are supported largely by state taxes; my comment had nothing to do with their exempt status. To stay in business, they must either (1) raise tuitions, or (2) siphon off a bigger share of state revenue which will be made up for by higher taxes, or (3) earn income on property they own. The sale and licensing of IP to augment operating expenses is one option that both taxpayers and students in my state prefer.
This is not new. My university has been doing this as far back as I can remember, and they've required signed intellectual property agreements from researchers, staff, students, and contractors who participate in research projects for at least a dozen years now. The formula to decide who owns what percentage of the IP derived from any specific project is complex, but it has to be because of the way projects are funded there. One program I worked on was financed partly by federal funds, by an industry consortium, by an individual donor, and by the university's general fund money. The federal funding came from multiple sources, each with their own IP restrictions. The long and short of it was that if you worked on this project, it was guaranteed that nothing you invented was yours. If I thought up something new and unique and patentable in the shower before I went to work, they owned it, not me.
But I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because the money the university makes off licensing IP is used in part to keep tuitions down and offset taxes. So I can continue to afford classes, and I can live where I live because the tax rates aren't outrageous.