Lawyers do seem to be crushing innovation in the USA. Do you think it's possible that innovation and the world's lead in technical developments will shift to places where inventors/creators/small start ups are less inhibited by patent/copyright etc laws, and new products get pushed out without so much risk of being crushed by established old organisations?
No, because the USA would simply apply massive diplomatic and economic pressure to force those countries to bring their IP laws in line with those of America.
I'm not convinced there's anywhere you can go to get away from those established old organizations -- especially since it would appear that the diplomats take their marching orders from the corporations and let them write some of the proposals. Almost all of the IP treaties the US pushes on other countries have essentially been written by industry.
Internet poker going brink-and-mortar is just plain old poker. Something that never did go out of fashion.
No, it can't be plain old poker... this is the new hotness. It has to be ePoker, or iPoker, or CyberPoker (or Kissand Poker;-)
How else can marketing sell this? If it's the same old poker you play with your buddies, where's the fun in that?
Actually, it takes a bit to find it in the article.... By legally forcing online gaming to have a home casino in the States, it could both reopen the online market while also capitalizing on that sweet tax revenue. I think what they're saying is you can't be an online casino if you don't have a corresponding regulated casino to be based out of -- or something, it's not big on details.
Of course, the big question, is why is America so against the notion of gambling? Is this just another morality issue, or because they're not getting taxes?
the program, which is attempting to replace the multiyear product drops for the Windows-branded desktop, server, phone, and network services products with a more agile release cycle
I have a hard time believing an entity the size of Microsoft is really going to be capable of 'agile'.
It has to be an absolutely vast code base, with a huge number of things to test -- and undoing that long of corporate culture takes a lot of work.
I'll be curious to see how they fare, but changing from big giant releases and versions to more frequent builds and releases is a difficult thing to do. And Microsoft is kind of well known for having their own intertia keep them from being able to really do this kind of thing.
I also think a lot of corporations won't be really keen to start getting these kinds of drops from Microsoft -- I've seen OS upgrades deployed in large organizations, and it's usually better part of a a year or so, with a large amount of manpower and planning. Doing even quarterly upgrades is something which would be almost impossible to keep up with. If you need to be sure nothing is going to break with each release, that's an awful lot of testing.
Microsoft trying to be more agile might in the end costing companies much more money and resources as they try to keep up. Which is why they've extended support for Windows 2003 to something like 2015 -- because an awful lot of people have mission critical stuff that isn't easily moved.
So, yes, I can blame it on the OS. Java may have been the initial vector that allowed the malware entry to the system, but the OS allowed the malware to do things it shouldn't have been able to.
Well, to play devil's advocate -- does the install of Java end up bypassing some of the security?
I see a lot of stuff which doesn't want to install into user space, but wants Admin rights and wants to integrate tightly with other things. At which point, installing what should be trusted software is really just opening you up to all sorts of problems.
Though, at this point, it's hard not to conclude that all versions of Java browser plugins are insecure and not to be trusted.
HTC is trying to replace megapixels with 'ultrapixels,' cutting down the size of photos but using much larger individual pixels to sharply reduce noise and improve low-light performance.
This doesn't sound like it's a good thing.
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels? That sounds more like "we've put in a lower resolution camera, and that's better".
Of course, the problem with low light performance on a phone is the sensor is so small as to be useless at the published megapixel rates. Which is why my cell phone will never replace my actual cameras.
To you maybe, but for me the console is still the preferred way to play games.
Today, when people carry in their pockets a device with a screen that offers much better resolution than the TV screen did, consoles make no sense at all, at least not for the consumer.
Dude, what? I have a 55" HD LCD in my living room connected to a surround sound amp, and I can game from my recliner.
A phone or a tablet are fine for when you're travelling, but for me (even if I am just a casual gamer), my console is still the way to go. And since my wife also uses the Kinect, it's not going anywhere.
However, if Microsoft is going to make the 720 require a constant internet connection and eliminate used games... I'm more likely to buy myself an XBox 360 to keep as a spare for when this one dies. Always-on internet is a non-starter for me for games -- since it seems to get used for ads and other crap I don't care about (I don't play on-line games at all).
There is only one group that benefits from the console system today, the game publishers.
And, you know, consumers who prefer to have a console. I'm betting the sales figures for console games show that a lot of people still primarily use them.
It may be obsolete and irrelevant for you, but for some of us, it's the only game in town.
I think you're the only person on the planet who thinks that "Equal protection" should mean "equal taxes". Do you want your taxes to equal what [Teresa Heinz/Mitt Romney/other-rich-person] has to pay?
In absolute terms, no, in terms of relative chunk of income -- absolutely. He'd be nowhere near the only person on the planet who believes that Warren Buffet should be taxed at the same rate as everyone else.
The research plainly shows that watching pornography results in the objectification of women. If that's something you're okay with then you have no place discussing science with adults.
Mu. A bold assertion of fact followed by an ad hominem attack, I'm impressed.
Have you stopped beating your wife, sir?
If you'd care to debate, fine -- otherwise fuck off.
It's different because if you have a job that pays you a very generous amount and requires close to no intelligence at all to do, you are far less likely to manage your finances well.
I've known people with PhDs who have declared bankruptcy -- the amount of intelligence required to do your job and your financial acumen are not directly correlated.
I'm just saying, if you take someone with no clue how to handle money, give them a way to make large amounts of it in a short period of time after which they will no longer be able to make that money, the results will be less than stellar.
Yeah? How many of those people who had.com era salaries find themselves in the same boat?
Seriously, what are you arguing for? We should outlaw porn because some people will make money in the industry, spend it all, and then not have any? As I said, that is true for every other job on the planet, and it isn't unique to porn.
The author of the article points out that Google didn't like the term 'flaw' in the title and beginning of the article, that's all.
Do no evil. When caught, redefine evil.
Looks like I won't be getting any more apps on my Android phone, because I did not consent to that data being provided to anybody other than Google, and where I live, that's illegal.
Today I learned that app developers don't deserve to be treated like real merchants
If you buy ketchup at a grocery store, do they send your personal information to Heinz?
Of course they don't.
The app developers don't need to know anything more than how much they get paid. And in some cases, if Google is doing this -- it would be considered illegal.
This is just colossal stupidity, there's no reason those companies should be getting any of this information.
If a woman has the discipline to save and invest money it can work out alright. If they don't they can find themselves like many athletes, broke without the physical traits needed to make that kind of money anymore.
And this is different from every other job on the planet how?
News flash, people who spend all of their money can end up broke.
You left out a few steps. He bought the seed, sprayed it with glyphosate to kill the non-GMO plants, harvested the resulting pure-GMO seed, and used it the following year to grow crops treated with glyphosate.
You're claiming that, but it's not in either of the articles linked from the summary. The description of what he did was to buy generic seed and use it. You're suggesting a willful violation with facts not present.
Are you seriously suggesting that was unintentional?
No, I'm seriously suggesting that the articles make no statements to back up your claim, and that your assertion is lacking any evidence.
I see nothing to support your claim that Mr. Bowman did any of what you claim -- in fact, I see the opposite.
So, either cite something specific to this case, or stop making factual assertions you can't back up. Show me one place where it details that Bowman did this, because I haven't been able to find any reference to it in the articles.
Fair enough, but you can have a much longer career as an engineer than as a stripper.
Same applies for a professional athlete -- only it can be more lucrative.
I've known several strippers who had their houses paid off, and had banked a shit load of money. They then use that money for their stuff after the career dancing. More than a few do it while they're still going to school.
Just because people are free doesn't give them the right to make decisions that are plainly wrong.
Actually, that's exactly what being free means -- not just free to make decisions you agree with or that are rational, because people make irrational choices all of the time.
Limits need to be set to reduce the harm caused. This is SCIENTIFIC research, devoid of any idealogical content. If you don't agree with science then you're one of the nutbags who needs to be made harmless to the rest of society.
And you've just made the same mistake and made science an ideology. You're just wrapping it up in something you think is more respectable.
Can you scientifically demonstrate you should never steal? Is it an objective fact of science? A physical law? What about to feed your family? Is is scientifically OK then? How about killing? Is it immoral for a wolf to eat a bunny? If not, why is it unethical for you to kill someone else? How about pre-marital sex? Scientifically, human sex evolved long before marriage, and from an evolutionary perspective, it's to the benefit of men to knock up everything they can find to propagate their genes (and it's beneficial for women to find someone to help out with it). What is the scientific threshold at which an evolutionary imperative becomes a moral issue?
Use only science in your answers, in objectively quantifiable terms based purely on observable physical properties, please cite the meta-analysis of your studies to support your claims. You'll need to define all the way down to your metaphysics, otherwise you're reaching conclusions based on things not scientific.
The problem is that morality and ethics aren't science, not by a long shot. Some people will hold up what their belief system tells them as self-evident and objectively true and immutable. Others will point out situational morality and say "there's no black and white". Others will claim we're just animals, there is no morality, only the consequences of pissing someone else off too much.
What does science tell us about this? For that matter, what branch of science tells us these things?
By elevating science to the level you just did, you are now making the same kind tenuous claims as the people in the article -- "my beliefs tell me this, they must be true, therefore you must be made to comply".
I'm not dismissing science (far from it) -- but you reach a certain point where you're outside of science, and into religion, philosophy, and whatever other random shit people believe in. And then science falls apart completely. And as soon as you use any of these to justify telling people what they can and can't do you're into ideology.
Speech is political or social commentary, which is what actually needs to be protected. If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society.
Sure we do -- we lose the right to do things without someone else deciding that it's morally wrong and forcing us not to do it.
Even more, it prevents us from having a community with standards. When porn is common, everyone gets desensitized to porn and lets it shape their worldview.
Ah, but whose standards? Are you suggesting your standards are so awesome the rest of us should be legally required to adhere to them? Because anybody who suggests something is half way to becoming the problem as they'll want to make it illegal to do anything they disagree with.
In the name of freedom of speech, expression, etc. we have permitted ourselves to become crass and to support outright destructive ideas
Humans have been crass and supportive of outright destructive ideas for millenia. And humans are a diverse group who believe all sorts of stupid shit, believing otherwise is stupid.
And people tend to define "outright destructive ideas" as anything they don't agree with.
The best you can do in society is to try to balance the needs and wants of everybody -- not take one group and make what they think is Divine Immutable Truth and make everybody else follow it.
Who do we pick? The loudest? The most numerous? The ones who have always been in power? The first born male child?
Little old ladies who think a skirt should never be above the knee, people who believe a woman's face should be covered, or that dancing is the work of the devil -- those people are all entitled to their beliefs, but that doesn't confer any obligation on me to adhere to their beliefs. No more than anything that I choose to do that they disagree with confers any obligation on them.
The only obligation here is to shut the fuck up and mind your own business. Freedom of speech says "you can disagree, but you can't stop it" -- and quite frankly, it's a far better situation than a bunch of fanatics trying to make it law that the rest of us live up to what they believe.
I'm not going to adhere to your beliefs just because you want to, and I'm not going to listen to anything you say that says "god told me we can't do this"... and at that point, you hold your tongue, and I'll hold mine. But if you think your beliefs gives you the right to tell me what I can and can't do -- then your beliefs are shit.
Freedom collides with democracy again. "Progressive" democracy that can conjur reasons to remove freedom to the applause of people.
Of course, Conservatives and religious people will try to remove your freedoms on different grounds.
Sooner or later, any group in power will try to impose their view of the world on everybody else and try to define acceptable behavior according to their model.
And if you have a better system than democracy, we're all ears.
Of course it's possible, but companies aren't explicitly planning for it, and in many cases I suspect actively not doing it because they don't want to -- why build it to allow you to fix it when you can pay them again?
How many devices have we seen over the years which could have worked with standard hard drives, but they've injected some proprietary layer to make sure it isn't?
For starters, I can't imagine it being easy to make a tablet you can open up and make changes to.
And then every manufacturer would rather you replace the device when it breaks or needs upgrading. And if they can get you locked into their software, even better.
Companies don't really care about consumers rights, and they never will. They're only in it to make profit -- I don't care who the vendor is, they'll all do it.
Microsoft, Apple, and even Google since they're trying to drive everything you do to the things that make them money and make sure you have to keep buying their stuff.
So I am still waiting for a single citation for Monsanto suing anyone for unintentional infringement.
Then read the fucking article.
At the center of the case is Monsanto's protection of its patented soybean, known as Roundup Ready. When farmers like Bowman plant the company's seeds, they are only allowed to harvest the resulting crop - not keep any for next year's harvest.
Under these rules, farmers have to buy new Monsanto seeds to plant each season, even if they already have usable seeds in their possession. However, farmers are able to buy excess soybeans from local grain elevators, many of which are likely to be Roundup Ready seeds. One of Bowman's trips to such a grain elevator put him in Monsanto's sights.
"We have always had the right to go to an elevator, buy some 'junk grain' and use it for seed if you desire," Bowman explained. But the question of whether he really does have that right is still up in the air. and will be determined by a Supreme Court judge.
He bought bulk seed from a grain elevator, planted it, didn't use any Monsanto products, but now finds himself in a lawsuit.
So someone buys their shit, signs a contract, sells it into a common pool, and someone ends up with Monsanto's patented genes in their crop.
The guy who sold the junk grain broke his contract to not save seeds for next year, but this guy neither signed a contract with Monsanto nor knew he was using their shit.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be forgetting the War on Terror, Copyright Infringement and Human Rights, citizen.
Please report to your nearest re-education center.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
No, because the USA would simply apply massive diplomatic and economic pressure to force those countries to bring their IP laws in line with those of America.
I'm not convinced there's anywhere you can go to get away from those established old organizations -- especially since it would appear that the diplomats take their marching orders from the corporations and let them write some of the proposals. Almost all of the IP treaties the US pushes on other countries have essentially been written by industry.
No, it can't be plain old poker ... this is the new hotness. It has to be ePoker, or iPoker, or CyberPoker (or Kissand Poker ;-)
How else can marketing sell this? If it's the same old poker you play with your buddies, where's the fun in that?
Actually, it takes a bit to find it in the article .... By legally forcing online gaming to have a home casino in the States, it could both reopen the online market while also capitalizing on that sweet tax revenue. I think what they're saying is you can't be an online casino if you don't have a corresponding regulated casino to be based out of -- or something, it's not big on details.
Of course, the big question, is why is America so against the notion of gambling? Is this just another morality issue, or because they're not getting taxes?
I have a hard time believing an entity the size of Microsoft is really going to be capable of 'agile'.
It has to be an absolutely vast code base, with a huge number of things to test -- and undoing that long of corporate culture takes a lot of work.
I'll be curious to see how they fare, but changing from big giant releases and versions to more frequent builds and releases is a difficult thing to do. And Microsoft is kind of well known for having their own intertia keep them from being able to really do this kind of thing.
I also think a lot of corporations won't be really keen to start getting these kinds of drops from Microsoft -- I've seen OS upgrades deployed in large organizations, and it's usually better part of a a year or so, with a large amount of manpower and planning. Doing even quarterly upgrades is something which would be almost impossible to keep up with. If you need to be sure nothing is going to break with each release, that's an awful lot of testing.
Microsoft trying to be more agile might in the end costing companies much more money and resources as they try to keep up. Which is why they've extended support for Windows 2003 to something like 2015 -- because an awful lot of people have mission critical stuff that isn't easily moved.
Well, to play devil's advocate -- does the install of Java end up bypassing some of the security?
I see a lot of stuff which doesn't want to install into user space, but wants Admin rights and wants to integrate tightly with other things. At which point, installing what should be trusted software is really just opening you up to all sorts of problems.
Though, at this point, it's hard not to conclude that all versions of Java browser plugins are insecure and not to be trusted.
AdBlock runs just fine on an Android phone, in case you didn't know. I put it on mine pretty much the day I got it.
This doesn't sound like it's a good thing.
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels? That sounds more like "we've put in a lower resolution camera, and that's better".
Of course, the problem with low light performance on a phone is the sensor is so small as to be useless at the published megapixel rates. Which is why my cell phone will never replace my actual cameras.
To you maybe, but for me the console is still the preferred way to play games.
Dude, what? I have a 55" HD LCD in my living room connected to a surround sound amp, and I can game from my recliner.
A phone or a tablet are fine for when you're travelling, but for me (even if I am just a casual gamer), my console is still the way to go. And since my wife also uses the Kinect, it's not going anywhere.
However, if Microsoft is going to make the 720 require a constant internet connection and eliminate used games ... I'm more likely to buy myself an XBox 360 to keep as a spare for when this one dies. Always-on internet is a non-starter for me for games -- since it seems to get used for ads and other crap I don't care about (I don't play on-line games at all).
And, you know, consumers who prefer to have a console. I'm betting the sales figures for console games show that a lot of people still primarily use them.
It may be obsolete and irrelevant for you, but for some of us, it's the only game in town.
In absolute terms, no, in terms of relative chunk of income -- absolutely. He'd be nowhere near the only person on the planet who believes that Warren Buffet should be taxed at the same rate as everyone else.
Even points out that the fact that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary is absurd.
They give so many tax loop hopes to corporations and the wealthy that they find every little way to find some tax avoidance.
Buffet knows more about money than pretty much anybody who sits in congress (or any other government) -- and he seems to think it's a reasonable idea.
Mu. A bold assertion of fact followed by an ad hominem attack, I'm impressed.
Have you stopped beating your wife, sir?
If you'd care to debate, fine -- otherwise fuck off.
I've known people with PhDs who have declared bankruptcy -- the amount of intelligence required to do your job and your financial acumen are not directly correlated.
Yeah? How many of those people who had .com era salaries find themselves in the same boat?
Seriously, what are you arguing for? We should outlaw porn because some people will make money in the industry, spend it all, and then not have any? As I said, that is true for every other job on the planet, and it isn't unique to porn.
Do no evil. When caught, redefine evil.
Looks like I won't be getting any more apps on my Android phone, because I did not consent to that data being provided to anybody other than Google, and where I live, that's illegal.
Then tell us the name of your software, and we'll be sure not to buy it. Betting you'll not want to do that.
You're selling something through a 3rd party, all you need to know is how much money is owed to you.
Budweiser doesn't need to get notified if I buy some of their beer.
The expectation of these stores is I'm only entering into a business arrangement with the store who sells your product, and not you.
If you buy ketchup at a grocery store, do they send your personal information to Heinz?
Of course they don't.
The app developers don't need to know anything more than how much they get paid. And in some cases, if Google is doing this -- it would be considered illegal.
This is just colossal stupidity, there's no reason those companies should be getting any of this information.
And this is different from every other job on the planet how?
News flash, people who spend all of their money can end up broke.
You're claiming that, but it's not in either of the articles linked from the summary. The description of what he did was to buy generic seed and use it. You're suggesting a willful violation with facts not present.
No, I'm seriously suggesting that the articles make no statements to back up your claim, and that your assertion is lacking any evidence.
I see nothing to support your claim that Mr. Bowman did any of what you claim -- in fact, I see the opposite.
So, either cite something specific to this case, or stop making factual assertions you can't back up. Show me one place where it details that Bowman did this, because I haven't been able to find any reference to it in the articles.
Same applies for a professional athlete -- only it can be more lucrative.
I've known several strippers who had their houses paid off, and had banked a shit load of money. They then use that money for their stuff after the career dancing. More than a few do it while they're still going to school.
I mean, I've heard that some strippers do that.
Actually, that's exactly what being free means -- not just free to make decisions you agree with or that are rational, because people make irrational choices all of the time.
And you've just made the same mistake and made science an ideology. You're just wrapping it up in something you think is more respectable.
Can you scientifically demonstrate you should never steal? Is it an objective fact of science? A physical law? What about to feed your family? Is is scientifically OK then? How about killing? Is it immoral for a wolf to eat a bunny? If not, why is it unethical for you to kill someone else? How about pre-marital sex? Scientifically, human sex evolved long before marriage, and from an evolutionary perspective, it's to the benefit of men to knock up everything they can find to propagate their genes (and it's beneficial for women to find someone to help out with it). What is the scientific threshold at which an evolutionary imperative becomes a moral issue?
Use only science in your answers, in objectively quantifiable terms based purely on observable physical properties, please cite the meta-analysis of your studies to support your claims. You'll need to define all the way down to your metaphysics, otherwise you're reaching conclusions based on things not scientific.
The problem is that morality and ethics aren't science, not by a long shot. Some people will hold up what their belief system tells them as self-evident and objectively true and immutable. Others will point out situational morality and say "there's no black and white". Others will claim we're just animals, there is no morality, only the consequences of pissing someone else off too much.
What does science tell us about this? For that matter, what branch of science tells us these things?
By elevating science to the level you just did, you are now making the same kind tenuous claims as the people in the article -- "my beliefs tell me this, they must be true, therefore you must be made to comply".
I'm not dismissing science (far from it) -- but you reach a certain point where you're outside of science, and into religion, philosophy, and whatever other random shit people believe in. And then science falls apart completely. And as soon as you use any of these to justify telling people what they can and can't do you're into ideology.
Sure we do -- we lose the right to do things without someone else deciding that it's morally wrong and forcing us not to do it.
Ah, but whose standards? Are you suggesting your standards are so awesome the rest of us should be legally required to adhere to them? Because anybody who suggests something is half way to becoming the problem as they'll want to make it illegal to do anything they disagree with.
Humans have been crass and supportive of outright destructive ideas for millenia. And humans are a diverse group who believe all sorts of stupid shit, believing otherwise is stupid.
And people tend to define "outright destructive ideas" as anything they don't agree with.
The best you can do in society is to try to balance the needs and wants of everybody -- not take one group and make what they think is Divine Immutable Truth and make everybody else follow it.
Who do we pick? The loudest? The most numerous? The ones who have always been in power? The first born male child?
Little old ladies who think a skirt should never be above the knee, people who believe a woman's face should be covered, or that dancing is the work of the devil -- those people are all entitled to their beliefs, but that doesn't confer any obligation on me to adhere to their beliefs. No more than anything that I choose to do that they disagree with confers any obligation on them.
The only obligation here is to shut the fuck up and mind your own business. Freedom of speech says "you can disagree, but you can't stop it" -- and quite frankly, it's a far better situation than a bunch of fanatics trying to make it law that the rest of us live up to what they believe.
I'm not going to adhere to your beliefs just because you want to, and I'm not going to listen to anything you say that says "god told me we can't do this" ... and at that point, you hold your tongue, and I'll hold mine. But if you think your beliefs gives you the right to tell me what I can and can't do -- then your beliefs are shit.
Of course, Conservatives and religious people will try to remove your freedoms on different grounds.
Sooner or later, any group in power will try to impose their view of the world on everybody else and try to define acceptable behavior according to their model.
And if you have a better system than democracy, we're all ears.
LOL ... pics or it didn't happen is the appropriate meme here.
I'm sure lots of people would be interested in your, um, various parts. ;-)
OK, I'm a bad person, I know it.
Of course it's possible, but companies aren't explicitly planning for it, and in many cases I suspect actively not doing it because they don't want to -- why build it to allow you to fix it when you can pay them again?
How many devices have we seen over the years which could have worked with standard hard drives, but they've injected some proprietary layer to make sure it isn't?
Can we stop the irrational hatred of Apple too? Or are you doing the usual fanboi thing?
Sorry, but when did porn and Diablo 3 is the benchmark for utility? Did I miss a memo?
Enjoy your 5 hour battery life, I'll stick with the 10 I get out of my original iPad.
Glad you like your Surface Pro -- but that doesn't mean people aren't getting a lot of use and utility out of both iPad and Android tablets.
OK, not really.
For starters, I can't imagine it being easy to make a tablet you can open up and make changes to.
And then every manufacturer would rather you replace the device when it breaks or needs upgrading. And if they can get you locked into their software, even better.
Companies don't really care about consumers rights, and they never will. They're only in it to make profit -- I don't care who the vendor is, they'll all do it.
Microsoft, Apple, and even Google since they're trying to drive everything you do to the things that make them money and make sure you have to keep buying their stuff.
Then read the fucking article.
He bought bulk seed from a grain elevator, planted it, didn't use any Monsanto products, but now finds himself in a lawsuit.
So someone buys their shit, signs a contract, sells it into a common pool, and someone ends up with Monsanto's patented genes in their crop.
The guy who sold the junk grain broke his contract to not save seeds for next year, but this guy neither signed a contract with Monsanto nor knew he was using their shit.
How fucking unintentional do you need?