If you had told someone 25 years ago that criminals in Russia try to steal your ID for profit while in the USA the state tries to invade your privacy to ferret out dissidents...
You go there and pull off an I-am-smart-and-you-are-a-moron on these folks that are trying to make a living. How is that different from being an asshole?
It's probably not.
But in this case, the asshole is doing it to tell you that someone who is going to play much less nicely could also do it.
However, the problem is, any sufficiently advanced form of "just looking" is indistinguishable from "I'm in your interwebs, and I'm stealing your data".
Sure, but let's be honest... it's like speaking Klingon. It's cool, and maybe a fun intellectual exercise, but in the grand scheme of things more of a hobby than anything.
2. Widespread adoption is not the only redeeming quality a creative endeavor can have.
Sure, I get that... but I'm desperately trying to see the point. It's like building a framework for building calendars. OK, does this come up much? (Hell, maybe it has applications in converting between calendars for all I know)
3. You're probably one of those people that doesn't get the point of philosophy also.
Now you're just being an ass. I may be a cynical old man, but I'm a well read cynical old man.
4. Then don't use it.
Oddly enough, not a problem.
That doesn't change the fact that the practical applications of this, on the surface at least, seem rather limited.
Feel free to use it. Have your own secret handshake with the 12 other guys who will. You can have annual conventions and everything.:-P
I didn't think it would be possible to remake the calendar and end up with something more complicated, but they've done it.
Our calendar is complicated because it's based on actual astronomy and real things like how long it takes us to go around the sun and stuff like that.
It's the culmination of thousands of years of real time keeping. Noon means more than 12pm... it means when the sun crosses the meridian.
The Gregorian Calendar has its awkward bits. But they're based in a large number of years of observations of the actual physical thing.
And, besides, no matter how elegant this new calendar purports to be... nobody is going to realistically give a damn about it. Ten days before the UNIX epoch as a calendar start epoch? Wow, a calendar which starts out as a hack to work with legacy software. How apropos.
And how, pray tell, does one refer to previous dates? Do we have the super elegant solution of negative numbers? 'Cause nobody is gonna say "'I was born back in -20, lo those many years ago' just because some guy made up a new calendar.
Maybe we could call it 'Pre New Fangled' and 'After New Fangled'? Apparently that Jesus feller was born way back in 1970PNF.
You're not going to be able to use it for anything, because you'll be perpetually converting it back to something everybody already understands.
No matter how much of a confusing mess the Gregorian calendar is, a new calendar more or less solves no practical purpose. That's not to say it might not be cool. But nobody will ever actually use this for anything other than showing off to other geeks -- and even they might roll their eyes.
Note that it is possible to still have roads, education, hospitals, and the internet without resorting to the over-regulation of an omni-present government.
Sure, but in reality, as time passes people find new and creative ways to try to cheat the system and screw others over.
So you get a longer list of "no, you definitely can't do that".
Unless, of course, you actually like the idea of melamine in pet food and baby formula.
These are not issues "the market" is capable of self correcting -- because saying people are free to not buy a product which is poisonous is a stupid argument.
As society and technology gets bigger and more complex, guess what? The laws required to keep it sane and orderly do as well.
And this is why we have patent/copyright trolls... a broken legal framework, coupled with a broken legal system, and no real penalties against people who file blatantly abusive lawsuits.
And people wonder why everyone thinks lawyers should all be killed.
Example, an old 1968 Ford stationwagon with power steering was easy to steer until hwy speeds then feels like it oversteers way too much.
Meh, I don't think that's the fault of the power steering, it was the fault of the fact that the first quarter turn didn't actually do anything.
At least, that was certainly true with my father's cars in the 70's and 80's.
It always felt like the steering inputs were really loosely coupled to the actual steering, and would go from mushy to terrifying in a small increment (which was smaller than the play before which it did absolutely nothing).
The first time I drove my brother's VW Jetta it felt like it was on rails.
I thought exactly that. I've know Alzheimer's victims that weren't diagnosed till very late due to people ignoring cynical me, while viewing them with mindless uncriticality.
A couple of years ago, I had a relative who just didn't seem right.
It had been a few years since I'd seen her, but she was quiet, almost wooden, and neither laughed nor told jokes, and surely didn't exhibit her usual acerbic wit. She was almost docile.
The first thing I said to several people are "what the heck is wrong with her, she's not the same". Several other relatives all said the same thing.
Turns out she was having some bad side effects of medications, and people hadn't picked up on it -- for some reason it didn't seem unusual to them. Once they squared away her meds, she went back to normal very quickly.
Had we all expected a quiet, docile, agreeable idiot, nobody would have ever noticed. The fact that she suddenly was sent of huge alarm bells for me that something had changed.
I'm not sure there's much about humans which is nearly as old as beer... a lot of people think beer is why humans started farming in the first place.;-)
....so long as the statists continue to defend ever increasing amounts of regulation with bullshit arguments like this, sure.
Yawn... do you know what you would have without a state? Nothing.
You wouldn't have an education, running water, roads, a hospital to have been born in, or an internet to use to bitch about the state. You'd probably be someone's property.
You know what they call people who want to overthrow the state? Terrorists.
You might choose to call yourself a revolutionary. Go ahead. You'd be in good company with Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin.
And, you'll probably whine about how the state does everything with a gun pointed to your head. If it wasn't the state, it would be someone else.
And what you're idealizing is pointing a gun to the head of everyone else and saying they must accept your wonderfully deluded reality. Again, just like Chairman Mao et al... if we could only force the masses to see how divinely right we are, they would understand. But if they won't understand on their own, they must be made to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd have been right. ;-)
*phbtbtbtbt* I have the ability to change color after very brief exposure to the sun. ;-)
Because, you know, the NSA et al are doing just as much hacking as the black hats are.
At which point, one must assume they'll continue to use this botnet for their own purposes, and not simply dismantle it.
Why give up an established spy network?
It's probably not.
But in this case, the asshole is doing it to tell you that someone who is going to play much less nicely could also do it.
However, the problem is, any sufficiently advanced form of "just looking" is indistinguishable from "I'm in your interwebs, and I'm stealing your data".
You're stupid, why should I care about you?
Sure, but let's be honest ... it's like speaking Klingon. It's cool, and maybe a fun intellectual exercise, but in the grand scheme of things more of a hobby than anything.
Sure, I get that ... but I'm desperately trying to see the point. It's like building a framework for building calendars. OK, does this come up much? (Hell, maybe it has applications in converting between calendars for all I know)
Now you're just being an ass. I may be a cynical old man, but I'm a well read cynical old man.
Oddly enough, not a problem.
That doesn't change the fact that the practical applications of this, on the surface at least, seem rather limited.
Feel free to use it. Have your own secret handshake with the 12 other guys who will. You can have annual conventions and everything. :-P
Our calendar is complicated because it's based on actual astronomy and real things like how long it takes us to go around the sun and stuff like that.
It's the culmination of thousands of years of real time keeping. Noon means more than 12pm ... it means when the sun crosses the meridian.
The Gregorian Calendar has its awkward bits. But they're based in a large number of years of observations of the actual physical thing.
And, besides, no matter how elegant this new calendar purports to be ... nobody is going to realistically give a damn about it. Ten days before the UNIX epoch as a calendar start epoch? Wow, a calendar which starts out as a hack to work with legacy software. How apropos.
And how, pray tell, does one refer to previous dates? Do we have the super elegant solution of negative numbers? 'Cause nobody is gonna say "'I was born back in -20, lo those many years ago' just because some guy made up a new calendar.
Maybe we could call it 'Pre New Fangled' and 'After New Fangled'? Apparently that Jesus feller was born way back in 1970PNF.
You're not going to be able to use it for anything, because you'll be perpetually converting it back to something everybody already understands.
No matter how much of a confusing mess the Gregorian calendar is, a new calendar more or less solves no practical purpose. That's not to say it might not be cool. But nobody will ever actually use this for anything other than showing off to other geeks -- and even they might roll their eyes.
OK, sure, you're invented your own calendar. I'm sure it's awesome.
But nobody will use it.
But, hey, some people speak Klingon at parties in the hopes it will impress their friends.
Seriously, do you expect people to use this? Or is it purely an intellectual exercise?
I'm afraid I don't see the point.
Sure, but in reality, as time passes people find new and creative ways to try to cheat the system and screw others over.
So you get a longer list of "no, you definitely can't do that".
Unless, of course, you actually like the idea of melamine in pet food and baby formula.
These are not issues "the market" is capable of self correcting -- because saying people are free to not buy a product which is poisonous is a stupid argument.
As society and technology gets bigger and more complex, guess what? The laws required to keep it sane and orderly do as well.
And this is why we have patent/copyright trolls ... a broken legal framework, coupled with a broken legal system, and no real penalties against people who file blatantly abusive lawsuits.
And people wonder why everyone thinks lawyers should all be killed.
Meh, I don't think that's the fault of the power steering, it was the fault of the fact that the first quarter turn didn't actually do anything.
At least, that was certainly true with my father's cars in the 70's and 80's.
It always felt like the steering inputs were really loosely coupled to the actual steering, and would go from mushy to terrifying in a small increment (which was smaller than the play before which it did absolutely nothing).
The first time I drove my brother's VW Jetta it felt like it was on rails.
A couple of years ago, I had a relative who just didn't seem right.
It had been a few years since I'd seen her, but she was quiet, almost wooden, and neither laughed nor told jokes, and surely didn't exhibit her usual acerbic wit. She was almost docile.
The first thing I said to several people are "what the heck is wrong with her, she's not the same". Several other relatives all said the same thing.
Turns out she was having some bad side effects of medications, and people hadn't picked up on it -- for some reason it didn't seem unusual to them. Once they squared away her meds, she went back to normal very quickly.
Had we all expected a quiet, docile, agreeable idiot, nobody would have ever noticed. The fact that she suddenly was sent of huge alarm bells for me that something had changed.
Great, but if you sue me for trademark infringement of an unregistered mark, I'll just say I was using it first and countersue.
At which point, the courts will say "how should we know, neither is registered".
And then we're back to my point. I hereby decree CauseBy to be a trademark, now give me a million dollars.
Surely (well, hopefully) there is more to the legal system than "I know you are but what am I?". Someone please tell me there's more to it than that.
So if I had a shirt that said "I like Pi." (using the symbol for Pi), my shirt would be in violation of his trademark.
Except, it wouldn't.
The trademark prevents you from using it as a clothing brand identifier.
Having it be incidentally used on clothing is not infringing. This guy seems to think it is, but it doesn't work that way.
I don't think he's got a leg to stand on, but the problem with this stuff is it costs time and money in the form of lawyers to prove that.
This is just further evidence the USPTO are morons.
I'm not sure there's much about humans which is nearly as old as beer ... a lot of people think beer is why humans started farming in the first place. ;-)
Yawn ... do you know what you would have without a state? Nothing.
You wouldn't have an education, running water, roads, a hospital to have been born in, or an internet to use to bitch about the state. You'd probably be someone's property.
You know what they call people who want to overthrow the state? Terrorists.
You might choose to call yourself a revolutionary. Go ahead. You'd be in good company with Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin.
And, you'll probably whine about how the state does everything with a gun pointed to your head. If it wasn't the state, it would be someone else.
And what you're idealizing is pointing a gun to the head of everyone else and saying they must accept your wonderfully deluded reality. Again, just like Chairman Mao et al ... if we could only force the masses to see how divinely right we are, they would understand. But if they won't understand on their own, they must be made to understand.
Bravo, sir.
It doesn't work, but I do get a better sleep. ;-)
A darkened room doesn't seem to help much either. :-P
It's also too bad the general public is unaware of the difference between a trademark and a patent. ;-)
Then why on Earth would it have any legal standing?
If your trademark is non-registered, I should think you've legally got nothing.
Otherwise you could decree anything is a trademark and sue anybody you like, and there would be no legal basis for determining if you're full of shit.
Well, the Greek alphabet is based on the Phoenecian alphabet, so possibly even older than that.
Well, it's a trademark, so it's only applicable in the specific area in which you do business ... so I recommend pi. ;-)
After receiving a honey enema.
Fraternities ... mathematicians ... physicists ... the universe.
Whatever moron gave a trademark on the symbol for pi should be staked to an anthill.
LOL ...
Somewhat apropos, really.