"Poor dumb son of a bitch", were the words uttered by Dorthy Parker over the casket of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had sold out to Hollywood and, if I understand Parker's sentiment, Fitzgerald was way out of his league in the dog eat dog world of Hollywood.
Gary McKinnon is another poor dumb son of a bitch. He may well be mentally ill. There's a saying among criminals, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I think McKinnon will get eaten alive, served up as a reminder that big brother cuts you no slack when it comes to stealing their information.
Master criminals execute plans, most convicts commit crimes. Convicts get caught up in committing a crime, they're their own drug dealers and they're junkies. Their brains serve them up a high that comes from breaking the law. Convicts fill our prisons and take their cred from the hard time they do. McKinnon is his own junkie, a convict juiced on committing a crime. His delusions will probablly cost him his life whether he gets to go on living or not.
Let's not forget the historical roots of piracy. Sir Francis Drake, as well as being the first Captain to circumnavigate the world and an able Vice Admiral was also a privateer or a pirate by any other name. I think we will be said to have reached level one civilization when we have a world government and world courts. As an aside I think only when we have reached such a level of civilization will we be able to manage the Solar System.
Contrary to the above our current state pushes innovation and geopolitical invention. While the status quo states of the developed world push IP as a last ditch form of imperialism, developing nations and "pirates" derive new venues by running outside the highways of the status quo.
When these last issues are put to bed with one power group climbing into bed with others then the innovation that comes from the hurly burly of piracy will leave us with a status quo installed and fortified by international law. It may be that what is now seen as piracy is the last invigorated period of innovation we will see.
Do we tend to produce less bone stem cells as we age? Are stem cells from older people less viable for repairs? Should we be freezing our stem cells when we're young?
Given these two sentences, I'd just like to know what your definition of "fully committed" is.
Sorry for the ambiguity. I meant that the price was high relative to my commitment to owning a recumbent bike. I'm thinking or touring Canada again next year and I've given some thought to a trailer.
My understanding from idle chatter is that recumbent bikes outperform standard bikes except when challenging hills. As a tour of Canada starting out from Vancouver means crossing the Rockies I can't see touring on a recumbent bike if it can't match a standard frame when climbing mountains.
I live in Vancouver, B.C. I looked at recumbents, but found them to be a little pricy for something I wasn't fully committed to. My last tour on a mountain bike took me over 6000 km over plus 4 months. I crossed the rockies, went down south through the Cypress hills and across Canada to Montreal. Once I'd crossed the Rockies I really didn't experience any fatigue until Montreal. I found that once my body fat had dropped to next to nil fatigue began to take a toll at the end of the day. I could pinch my skin at my waist and it was fatless like rubbing two pieces of paper together.
Also as you spoke to various physical pains I experienced little or no pain, there was rather almost a daily endorphine high.
I'm presently rebuilding my mountain bike. I'd rather build the drive chain myself from quality parts then buy a bike new.
There are very few recumbent bikes on the west coast but I hope their numbers grow as I'd like to buy one.
But you don't understand, if you'd paid attention you'd have noticed... "The book is divided into nine chapters (numbered 0 through 8)... . Numbered 0 through 8 !!! It starts at 0 just like 'puter gurus do.
If it were numbered 1 through 9 then I'd agree the book is lacking, but 0, it starts at chapter 0. You just can't knock a book like that.
In the 90's Microsoft would go into major cities, set up a booth and offer to exchange illegal copies of MS software for legitimate copies.
I believe up until at least Me version and possibly Windows 2000 owners were allowed to install the OS on 2 computers in the family home and carry the OS over to a new mobo when owners updated their hardware. Fast forward to today.
Now, if Windows owners update their mobo's they must purchase a new OS and Home versions of Windows can only be installed on one mobo.
While MS pc Windows is still highly profitable it's no longer expanding in leaps and bounds. It may be that any forseeable increase in profits MS can see for Windows is in squeezing owners of pirated editions.
Personally as I've posted before I'm in countdown mode on Win Xp in a switch over to all Linux/BSD machines. By way of my parents buying my first pcs and my own purchases, as an individual, I've invested in MS DOS, Windows/NT and Office pro for 23 years. No more. I can motivate many people in my sphere of influence to switch to FOSS, but I can't do it if I'm still buying Windows for multimedia/games/web purposes.
If MS can access my computer on a daily basis under the guise of looking for it's stolen property than it's not out of the question that they can accesss my computer for the government. If you have Windows installed on an internet connected pc then you should have zero tolerance for having sensitive information on that pc.
New technology is often met by the buying public in a herd mentality. The model T dominated sales up to nearly 50% of all autos until near existing market saturation then, with the technology having proved itself, many variations in style and manufacture began to appear. Windows is the model T of operating systems, but the early market saturation period has passed.
If I'm right the biggest immediate threat to MS is Apple. I see Apple taking 4-8% of Windows share over the next 3-5 years.
On the desktop Open Source can take considerable market share by way of a multitude of inroads but there are many barriers to overcome.
As for me, as I finish building my new boxes Windows will be phased out. MS has so deeply alienated me that I'll willingly put in time to help fill in the gaps in productivity my switch over will incurr.
The earliest historical rendition of the anecdote I'm familiar with deals withChristopher Columbus. Columbus asked his detractors to stand a hardboiled egg on end, when they failed he cracked the base of the egg and pointed out that all problems seem intractable until a solution is provided.
The Columbus' anecdote seems to be true but I'm sure somewhere in the dark, dusty toe-stubbing recesses of my memory there is another anecdote of the same content dating back to Roman times. Standing an egg on end was said to be possible only on "the vernal and autumnal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator, making night and day equal on all parts of the earth."
Adobe's Portable Document Format has the potential to become the dominant player as a universal format meeting some of the requirements of an ODF. If Adobe keeps the entry price for generating pdfs low or nonexistant it could sell the sizzle, bells and whistles to make pdf a potential Windows Office killer.
Agencies of many governments already use pdf and academica widely uses pdfs. The push for an Open Document Format could help Adobe advance pdfs as an alternative amenable to all.
If Google is going to move from it's base as a search engine cum advertiser it could do well to look at Adobe as a buyout candidate. IIRC Adobe just recently nixed a deal with Microsoft to have Word docs be able to generate pdfs. Google may be partnering up with Adobe with the intention of investing heavily in the company while positioning itself against Microsoft.
Maybe MS will embrace F/OSS by underwritting and developing LaTeX:)
It's really impossible to address the range of issues such a claim covers. In evolutionary terms we're thought by many to be neotenic. From wikipedia: "
There is controversy over whether adult humans exhibit certain neotenous features, or juvenile characteristics, that are not evidenced in other great ape species. Stephen Jay Gould was an advocate of the view that humans are a neotenous species of chimpanzee; the argument being that juvenile chimpanzees have an almost-identical bone structure to humans, and that the chimpanzee's ability to learn seems to be cut off upon reaching maturity."
An argument could be made that as we're neotenic by evolutionary design it's "only natural" that psychologically we exhibit overextended developmental immaturity.
Our sense of humour is based on broken symmetry. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience by Erving Goffman was an early effort to set out the myriad markers we use to establish a contextual frame and the wit we employ to break that frame for various reasons, humour not least among them.
Our relatively oversized brain is conjectured to be an outgrowth of our intricate social relationships. Our fetishes and rituals have come under scrutiny by dint of recorded history and cultural cross fertilization. In the vein of familiarity breeds contempt it may be that we've simply come to more easily poke fun at ourselves.
The Marx brothers said it best: Groucho:"I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member"; and Karl: "Moi, je ne suis pas marxiste."
It may be that those who are now seen as relatively immature are those whose lives most correspond with the material wealth that permited playful immaturity. I suggest that Freud's concept of polymorphous perversity can be extended from sexuallity to all aspects of our lives as a description of our ability to transcend our basic nature.
"The USPTO will issue the first storyline patent in history today [CC], with two others following in the next few months. Right to Create points out [CC] that this was anticipated several months ago [CC] in a story by Richard Stallman published in the The Guardian, UK. With the publication of this not-yet-granted patent, its author can begin requiring licensing fees for anyone whose activities might fall within its claims, including book authors, movie studies, television studios and broadcasters, etc. The claims appear to cover the literary elements of a story involving an ambitious high school student who applies for entrance to MIT and prays to remain sleeping until the acceptance letter comes, which doesn't happen for another 30 years."
Further to conflating copyright with patents, there's a push on in European countries that would grant any source, e.g. web site, radio station, broadcasting material a copyright to the material as broadcasted. I suspect the rationale behind the push for granting such a copyright has to do with folk art. Slashdot has run stories on the move by european broadcasters to secure said copyrights but I can't find any of the stories at the moment.
I meant to address the conflating of copyright as patents but also to point to the wealth of folk material that underlies most modern art. It's as though mass media companies want ownership of art tied to their outdated technology; as though the circa 20th century technology made the art. I didn't do a very good job of addressing the two issues of copyright and patents in terms of the referrenced/. story.
The web is a venue that can accomodate the entirety of print, recorded music and film (along with facimilies of painting, sculpture and architecture). Before the web the venues were able at best to accomodate a limited slice of any one genre and had to be financially supported or make a profit.
As a first step to experiencing this universal availability the purveyors of the various works will pay sites that manage to attract a profitable slice of people seeking to experience a new (or old) genre.These 'cool people' who act as conduits to rediscovered works should be pushed aside when search engines can easily provide stepping stones from work/artist to another. For example there are major works by J. Hydan, Mozart and Beethoven that each draw on the same musical source, (I believe it's Mozart's 40th, Beethoven's 5th and a source work from Hydan I can't immediately recall). Once the web is in full swing a neophyte to any genre will be able to hop, skip and jump through the various tenuous associated works with an ease that unthinkable before the web.
I've posted in the past that the best way to circumvent the attacks of copyright holders on the open imaginative playground that is the web is to float on the web the entirety of folklore in terms of folk music and folktales that would present an ocean of prior art from which most modern works have drawn their inspriation.
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" This phrase has entered Western popular culture as a catchphrase. It also turned up in the Dirk Gently stories by Douglas Adams where the detective uses the opposite phrase, "because we know very much about what is improbable, but very little about what is possible".
Apparently the RIF responses are nothing to do about much.
For those who don't know...""Strange Fruit" is a song most famously performed by Billie Holiday that condemns American racism, particularly the practice of lynching and burning African Americans that was prevalent in the South at the time when it was written.
Holiday's phrasing was so unique that every song is a treat, but 'Strange Fruit' was, perhaps, the song for which she is best known.
It's often been noted that MS overall tends to follow on the innovation of others. Netscape's early dominance as a browser is the most often pointed to example.
It's not unlikely that MS has been waiting for F/OSS to die only to watch it grow stronger. MS may now see F/OSS as something it must embrace, (images of a giant anaconda). Bill Gate's impending retirement as chief architect may in part be a way to remove himself (perhaps Ballmer will follow) as a way to distance MS from his and Ballmer's past attacks on F/OSS as a commie plot. Both men may have too much of an ingrained distaste for interoperability with F/OSS.
As Chairman Gate's will have a duty to steer the company in the direction of greatest profit, and given the entrenched position of F/OSS, that direction will require MS to work toward interoperability with F/OSS.
Science proceeds in large part by surpassing new thresholds. Many thresholds are surpassed by advances in applied technology. Today much of science, if done correctly, needs the professional touch of scientists who can enact complex procedures correctly. The examples below are from The Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th Edition. The material in chapter 8, Cell isolation gives insight into the advances made in procedural science that underlie the testing and validation or falsification of new theories.
An interesting example is as follows:"
A fluorescence-activated cell sorter. A cell passing through the laser beam is monitored for fluorescence. Droplets containing single cells are given a negative or positive charge, depending on whether the cell is fluorescent or not. The droplets are then deflected by an electric field into collection tubes according to their charge. Note that the cell concentration must be adjusted so that most droplets contain no cells and flow to a waste container together with any cell clumps."
The empirical scientists that correctly implement such challenging procedures are rarely mentioned.
The above debate hosted at Edge is now a bit dated but it does a good job of looking at gender and science. Our patriarchical history in the west has given us science as envisioned by men like Sir Francis Bacon. It led to a reductionist deterministic heritage that we've only recently begun to break free of. Women in general in the west are only a century or more free of being chattles to be disposed of by their fathers. I hope we'll see women bring to science a different mind set and new insights.
I've yet to download any pirated copies of American entertainment. In my world there's Bach and Bebop, these I have on CD; then there's the rest of what passes for music. As for the rest of what passes for American entertainment there's nothing worth stealing coming from the America. I look forward optimistically to an offering from American entertainment that would be worth stealing and, possibly, even buying.
I called it my mom's voice. If she called out to me and I was out of hearing range she'd instigate the hew and cry by voice and telephone. It was alarmingly effective.
"You'd better get home right now. You're mom's looking for you."
Slashdot Mirror
Gary McKinnon is another poor dumb son of a bitch. He may well be mentally ill. There's a saying among criminals, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I think McKinnon will get eaten alive, served up as a reminder that big brother cuts you no slack when it comes to stealing their information.
Master criminals execute plans, most convicts commit crimes. Convicts get caught up in committing a crime, they're their own drug dealers and they're junkies. Their brains serve them up a high that comes from breaking the law. Convicts fill our prisons and take their cred from the hard time they do. McKinnon is his own junkie, a convict juiced on committing a crime. His delusions will probablly cost him his life whether he gets to go on living or not.
just my loose change
Contrary to the above our current state pushes innovation and geopolitical invention. While the status quo states of the developed world push IP as a last ditch form of imperialism, developing nations and "pirates" derive new venues by running outside the highways of the status quo.
When these last issues are put to bed with one power group climbing into bed with others then the innovation that comes from the hurly burly of piracy will leave us with a status quo installed and fortified by international law. It may be that what is now seen as piracy is the last invigorated period of innovation we will see.
just my loose change
Will his family or other beneficiary receive a life insurance pay out? Maybe his "heart attack" was a last perk.
Do we tend to produce less bone stem cells as we age? Are stem cells from older people less viable for repairs? Should we be freezing our stem cells when we're young?
As it happened
Sorry for the ambiguity. I meant that the price was high relative to my commitment to owning a recumbent bike. I'm thinking or touring Canada again next year and I've given some thought to a trailer.
My understanding from idle chatter is that recumbent bikes outperform standard bikes except when challenging hills. As a tour of Canada starting out from Vancouver means crossing the Rockies I can't see touring on a recumbent bike if it can't match a standard frame when climbing mountains.
cheers
Also as you spoke to various physical pains I experienced little or no pain, there was rather almost a daily endorphine high.
I'm presently rebuilding my mountain bike. I'd rather build the drive chain myself from quality parts then buy a bike new.
There are very few recumbent bikes on the west coast but I hope their numbers grow as I'd like to buy one.
cheers
But you don't understand, if you'd paid attention you'd have noticed...
"The book is divided into nine chapters (numbered 0 through 8)... . Numbered 0 through 8 !!! It starts at 0 just like 'puter gurus do.
If it were numbered 1 through 9 then I'd agree the book is lacking, but 0, it starts at chapter 0. You just can't knock a book like that.
I believe up until at least Me version and possibly Windows 2000 owners were allowed to install the OS on 2 computers in the family home and carry the OS over to a new mobo when owners updated their hardware. Fast forward to today.
Now, if Windows owners update their mobo's they must purchase a new OS and Home versions of Windows can only be installed on one mobo.
While MS pc Windows is still highly profitable it's no longer expanding in leaps and bounds. It may be that any forseeable increase in profits MS can see for Windows is in squeezing owners of pirated editions.
Personally as I've posted before I'm in countdown mode on Win Xp in a switch over to all Linux/BSD machines. By way of my parents buying my first pcs and my own purchases, as an individual, I've invested in MS DOS, Windows/NT and Office pro for 23 years. No more. I can motivate many people in my sphere of influence to switch to FOSS, but I can't do it if I'm still buying Windows for multimedia/games/web purposes.
If MS can access my computer on a daily basis under the guise of looking for it's stolen property than it's not out of the question that they can accesss my computer for the government. If you have Windows installed on an internet connected pc then you should have zero tolerance for having sensitive information on that pc.
New technology is often met by the buying public in a herd mentality. The model T dominated sales up to nearly 50% of all autos until near existing market saturation then, with the technology having proved itself, many variations in style and manufacture began to appear. Windows is the model T of operating systems, but the early market saturation period has passed.
If I'm right the biggest immediate threat to MS is Apple. I see Apple taking 4-8% of Windows share over the next 3-5 years.
On the desktop Open Source can take considerable market share by way of a multitude of inroads but there are many barriers to overcome.
As for me, as I finish building my new boxes Windows will be phased out. MS has so deeply alienated me that I'll willingly put in time to help fill in the gaps in productivity my switch over will incurr.
The Columbus' anecdote seems to be true but I'm sure somewhere in the dark, dusty toe-stubbing recesses of my memory there is another anecdote of the same content dating back to Roman times. Standing an egg on end was said to be possible only on "the vernal and autumnal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator, making night and day equal on all parts of the earth."
Agencies of many governments already use pdf and academica widely uses pdfs. The push for an Open Document Format could help Adobe advance pdfs as an alternative amenable to all.
If Google is going to move from it's base as a search engine cum advertiser it could do well to look at Adobe as a buyout candidate. IIRC Adobe just recently nixed a deal with Microsoft to have Word docs be able to generate pdfs. Google may be partnering up with Adobe with the intention of investing heavily in the company while positioning itself against Microsoft.
Maybe MS will embrace F/OSS by underwritting and developing LaTeX:)
An argument could be made that as we're neotenic by evolutionary design it's "only natural" that psychologically we exhibit overextended developmental immaturity.
Our sense of humour is based on broken symmetry. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience by Erving Goffman was an early effort to set out the myriad markers we use to establish a contextual frame and the wit we employ to break that frame for various reasons, humour not least among them.
Our relatively oversized brain is conjectured to be an outgrowth of our intricate social relationships. Our fetishes and rituals have come under scrutiny by dint of recorded history and cultural cross fertilization. In the vein of familiarity breeds contempt it may be that we've simply come to more easily poke fun at ourselves.
The Marx brothers said it best: Groucho:"I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member"; and Karl: "Moi, je ne suis pas marxiste."
It may be that those who are now seen as relatively immature are those whose lives most correspond with the material wealth that permited playful immaturity. I suggest that Freud's concept of polymorphous perversity can be extended from sexuallity to all aspects of our lives as a description of our ability to transcend our basic nature.
"The USPTO will issue the first storyline patent in history today [CC], with two others following in the next few months. Right to Create points out [CC] that this was anticipated several months ago [CC] in a story by Richard Stallman published in the The Guardian, UK. With the publication of this not-yet-granted patent, its author can begin requiring licensing fees for anyone whose activities might fall within its claims, including book authors, movie studies, television studios and broadcasters, etc. The claims appear to cover the literary elements of a story involving an ambitious high school student who applies for entrance to MIT and prays to remain sleeping until the acceptance letter comes, which doesn't happen for another 30 years."
Further to conflating copyright with patents, there's a push on in European countries that would grant any source, e.g. web site, radio station, broadcasting material a copyright to the material as broadcasted. I suspect the rationale behind the push for granting such a copyright has to do with folk art. Slashdot has run stories on the move by european broadcasters to secure said copyrights but I can't find any of the stories at the moment.
I meant to address the conflating of copyright as patents but also to point to the wealth of folk material that underlies most modern art. It's as though mass media companies want ownership of art tied to their outdated technology; as though the circa 20th century technology made the art. I didn't do a very good job of addressing the two issues of copyright and patents in terms of the referrenced /. story.
As a first step to experiencing this universal availability the purveyors of the various works will pay sites that manage to attract a profitable slice of people seeking to experience a new (or old) genre.These 'cool people' who act as conduits to rediscovered works should be pushed aside when search engines can easily provide stepping stones from work/artist to another. For example there are major works by J. Hydan, Mozart and Beethoven that each draw on the same musical source, (I believe it's Mozart's 40th, Beethoven's 5th and a source work from Hydan I can't immediately recall). Once the web is in full swing a neophyte to any genre will be able to hop, skip and jump through the various tenuous associated works with an ease that unthinkable before the web.
I've posted in the past that the best way to circumvent the attacks of copyright holders on the open imaginative playground that is the web is to float on the web the entirety of folklore in terms of folk music and folktales that would present an ocean of prior art from which most modern works have drawn their inspriation.
The web in a way becomes the framework for players of Das Glasperlenspiel.
Apparently the RIF responses are nothing to do about much.
Holiday's phrasing was so unique that every song is a treat, but 'Strange Fruit' was, perhaps, the song for which she is best known.
It's not unlikely that MS has been waiting for F/OSS to die only to watch it grow stronger. MS may now see F/OSS as something it must embrace, (images of a giant anaconda). Bill Gate's impending retirement as chief architect may in part be a way to remove himself (perhaps Ballmer will follow) as a way to distance MS from his and Ballmer's past attacks on F/OSS as a commie plot. Both men may have too much of an ingrained distaste for interoperability with F/OSS.
As Chairman Gate's will have a duty to steer the company in the direction of greatest profit, and given the entrenched position of F/OSS, that direction will require MS to work toward interoperability with F/OSS.
just my loose change
So Sorry! I, I dunno, I just lost my head. Next time I'll be sure to run it past you personally.
An interesting example is as follows:" A fluorescence-activated cell sorter. A cell passing through the laser beam is monitored for fluorescence. Droplets containing single cells are given a negative or positive charge, depending on whether the cell is fluorescent or not. The droplets are then deflected by an electric field into collection tubes according to their charge. Note that the cell concentration must be adjusted so that most droplets contain no cells and flow to a waste container together with any cell clumps."
The empirical scientists that correctly implement such challenging procedures are rarely mentioned.
Sure that's a third eye on your elbow, but it's a feature, for free too.
PINKER VS. SPELKE
A DEBATE
The above debate hosted at Edge is now a bit dated but it does a good job of looking at gender and science. Our patriarchical history in the west has given us science as envisioned by men like Sir Francis Bacon. It led to a reductionist deterministic heritage that we've only recently begun to break free of. Women in general in the west are only a century or more free of being chattles to be disposed of by their fathers. I hope we'll see women bring to science a different mind set and new insights.
just my loose change
I've yet to download any pirated copies of American entertainment. In my world there's Bach and Bebop, these I have on CD; then there's the rest of what passes for music. As for the rest of what passes for American entertainment there's nothing worth stealing coming from the America. I look forward optimistically to an offering from American entertainment that would be worth stealing and, possibly, even buying.
I read the title as 'Linux Avoidance for Geeks'. I was reaching for my flame retardent suit when the flashing red error light went on.
"You'd better get home right now. You're mom's looking for you."
As an afficinado of all things quirky I will miss you.