It's hard to relax... I don't really care if SCO ceases to exist anymore, what I care about is whether Darl McBride et al continue to exist and perpetrate their unique style of "business"...
as soon as SCO vanishes in a cloud of bankruptcy, I wouldn't be suprised to see a new company form, comprised of _exactly the same people_, but freed of all responsibility for their past actions, all due to the fact that the 'SCO' name somehow sheilds them...
IANAL, but why does the legal system allow such a hideous shell-game to be played? It does little more than invite every unethical creep to exploit us to their heart's content.
corporations aren't individuals, and the owners of the corp should be responsible for what they do in it's name... because in the end, everything SCO does is the action of PEOPLE, not some legal fiction.
Guess this is good a place as any to ask...
Is there an official site/email address
where I can submit any kernel oopses I get?
Also, in case this helps anyone else...
If you're running debian woody, and you're
trying to upgrade to one of these kernels,
you're probably going to be hunting around
for a copy of module-init-tools that plays
nicely with woody, instead of sid's copy.
While these are probably bleeding edge
and all, here's two packages I found which
seems to do the trick for woody w/o breaking
dependancies... modutils module-init-tools
After installing 'em, the 2.4 modprobe et al
will be renamed modprobe.modutils,
and the 2.6 versions will fallback and call
the 2.4 version if you're running an old kernel.
It's much in the style of ML,
but with ideas from many other languages thrown in. And it definitely isn't an "academic"
language... it's developed and used by Ericsson
to drive telecommunications systems which
have to handle a huge load, and cant be allowed to crash.
Luckily, it's now open source (sorta),
and the basic Erlang OTP package contains
about as many side features as Python does:)
It's inherently parallel (a single program
can easily distribute itself across multiple computers), with concurrencies, and all kinds of other fun 'academic' features...
don't get me started on it's vm's model...
it brings tears to my eyes in a way only LISP
ever could (that's a good thing).
At the moment, I prefer Python,
but only because it's got better C integration...
Erlang works best when only the
lowlevel drivers are written in C...
E-Commerce is just another word for sales over TCP.
Instead of just getting an n-th click patent, they should
next try for the internet itself...
Given a little reworking of the above quoted piece...
A computer system for conducting electronic commerce, comprising:
A computer system for managing connections to a specific service, comprising:
a data component for storing information relating to a plurality of electronic commerce contexts for a user,
a program for storing the information about all of a given user's connections to the service, for all users.
the information relating to electronic commerce conducted while in that electronic commerce context;
and for logging the contents of all past sessions for a given user;
a component that receives from the user a selection of one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts;
and a program which, given the selection of one of a user's connections, and passes it to
and a component that, after receiving the selection of the one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts,
a program which, after being given the connection,
conducts electronic commerce with the user
proceeds to provide the service to the user
and stores information relating to the conducted electronic commerce
and logs information related to the session
in association with the selected electronic commerce context.
along with information on the connection itself.
...
Performing a similar change to the rest of their patent,
I could file a patent and cover
phone systems, security/authenication systems, PAM, HTTP, TCP,
oh, and e-commerce.
they should file my version, much more general, and more profitable!
[the preceding was brought to you by the campaign to mock corporate america]
No matter how horribly the screenplay is botched,
No matter little of the original book and radio show survives,
No matter how inaapropriately cast,
No matter how badly it's done,
No matter how many figures it costs to make,
just remember...
DON'T PANIC.
(This message brought to you by the
Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Division)
Actually it _is_ saying we're the only ones; anymore will come later. what was your point?
His seems pretty straight foward... we can float all the numbers, reasoning, and statistics we want, and even if we hit on a line of reasoning that was PROVABLY correct... someone would still have to sit there all alone for some time.
and until we make contact and compare, it may be us. or the ones we meet. or who knows.
this type of question falls outside the realm of theory, and in the realm of fact... as in, you can theorize all you want, but the only way you'll do anything more than intellectual masturbation is to search around and say "nope. don't see anything" "nope. still don't." "oh. there's some little grey men, there is lift beside us".
Since it is an important question, and since it can't be analyed very far theoretically (requiring knowledge of the structure of the unknown), we have programs like SETI, to do the searching around.
Sure, they haven't found anything yet, but that's all we _can_ do.
'Blade Runner', based off 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', a novel. A good novel, but the movie is perhaps better.
'Total Recall', based off 'We can remember it for you wholesale' (a much better short story than movie, and almost completely different).
'Minority Report', based off a short story of the same name. Story's good, it's simple, works great as a movie.
The last two stories are included in the 'Philip K Dick Reader', one of the collections of his short stories (I think it has two other good ones, Paycheck and Autofac, which haven't been made into movies).
For those interested in reading some more of him, 'A Scanner Darkly' and 'The World Jones Made' are two good novels.
You don't need to wait for them to become sentient. By working at one, you're letting it time-share on your sentience... Think about it: When you go into work, sit down in your cubicle, your job is to think "what is good for the corporation?", "what does the corporation want?", etc... Basically, you're thinking the thoughts that it would think were it truly alive, and thus, you enable it's "life".
The Matrix is already here, there's just no other reality to go offline to:)
To all the university students, on a tight budget, (like, say, me) consider this: Someday, you may be the one who needs help, for a program you thought was completely innocent. If we don't contribute now, there might not be anyone to help when that time comes.
This isn't just a response to the above post,
but the ones in this thread, and other ones like it...
You're caught up in saying "he's left"
"he's right" "define left" "define right"
"good" "evil", whatever...
don't get so carried
away assigning labels that you miss the point
of the act.
Whatever you decide to label Hollings as
(assuming some concensus was reached),
it won't have any effect on what it is he's
actually doing. If he calls himself a Democrat,
that doesn't mean his actions will by default
be "left wing", same if he calls himself a republican.
Fact is, that's why bills like his have a chance.
Government isn't a simple single-axis thing.
Just because something is or isn't left-wing
doesn't mean it's ring wing, or center or whatever. (I'd call attention to US History...
the meanings of the labels Democrat and
Republican has literally reversed meaning
a number of times).
There can be, for instance, acts of total
absorbed self-interest.
The SSSCA, whatever, benefits only a section
of businesses.
Let me take two extremes. Call them what you will.
One side is pro-individual freedom over government. They think the government should
butt out where it isn't invited.
To these people, I say... the SSSCA DMCA, etc,
should frighten you to your very soul...
this is the government beginning to say what
you can read, think, do.
Then there's the other extreme,
which thinks the government should be there
to help people, protect and support them
from their own follies and from each other.
To them, I say... the SSSCA DMCA, etc,
is an attempt to subvert the government
so that the interests of the few (RIAA, etc)
are enforced upon everyone, to the deteriment
of many and the benefit of few.
Who cares which side is which? Both viewpoints
are in the end just methods of analysis,
points from which you are viewing a topic,
not separate spectral ends of the range of responses.
IMNSHO, (In my not so humble opinion)
a good Representative Government isn't about the will
of the majority or a minority.
Nor is it about their best interests.
It's about the best interests of the WHOLE.
The majority and the minority.
That is, all the people to whom the law is applied.
(No Taxation w/o Representation and all)
From this viewpoint, a law is bad when
it damages the whole of the people,
no matter how few or how many it may
protect or help.
The *CA, whatever copyright interests
they may protect, serve to diminish the
creative drive of all the people,
howsoever subtly or slowly:
Say I sat down, and had a thought.
To me, it might be revolutionary.
Say it was some kind of algorithm.
Maybe someelse has patented it,
so I can't commercially profit from it.
The intent of these laws is to deny
me the freedom to even use this algorithm
ONLY ON MY OWN COMPUTER, ONLY FOR ME.
An algorithm like, say, a non-drm OS:)
Just because we can only think of one thing
to fix a problem, doesn't mean it should be done:
Cutting off the arm to cure gangrene used
to be an acceptable idea. Nowdays,
we use antibiotics. At the time,
it was acceptable: nothing at the time was likely
to replace it within the (short) expected
life-span of the patient.
But laws are different. They endure,
(at least in the US) long past the time
they have been forgotten,
long past the time
that common sense has moved on, and found
a better solution.
What we set into law now will linger on,
and not be so easy to tear down.
It's force will remain, even when other options
exist. And the nature of the *CA
laws is such that they will themselves
prevent any such options from ever seeing
the light of day, mutally exclusive memes,
much as the ideas open-source- and drm- OSes.
Whew. Sorry bout the rant:)
-Slackergod
Re:doesnt seem economical
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Total nonsense? Sure, you could pursue fusion. But we may not get fusion. Should we wait for the PERFECT energy source while we rely on the bad ones, unstead of using a better one, while we pursue the goal of fusion, which (while theortically realizeable) doesn't even have a timetable associated w/ it?
Furthermore, sure, the short-term costs would be large, but what are the costs for building and planning a new nuclear reactor?
Solar cells on earth? We have clouds. We have day and night. The moon (thanks to an astronomical quirk) has permanent day and night. Much better efficiency that we can get. Store it there. Send it over, microwave style, when the terran receiver is in place. Or bounce it off a satellite.
Just because you can conceive of better long term ideas, why should we not pursue a better short term idea, rather than stick to one that's actually harming us?
If a company decides it's sucess is reliant on attracting investors, then of course it must make a profit.
But if this is the case, then it's already decided that as part of it's business model, BEFORE the cycle even started. So it's still their choice.
And just because they CAN use such a business model does not make them right in doing it.
If they chose one that says we make a profit because customers want to buy our products, they don't have to have investors.
If the investors still want to invest, fine. No person or company has a "right" to make a profit.
The fact is, when a company uses logic like yours, it means their job is no longer to make widgets, but money. At which point, they are (by definition) no longer interested in the moral implications of their actions (ie, what they're producing), just the bottom line.
It is the fact that that attitude itself is so completely devoid of moral value which is disgusting. And how else COULD a company survive, you ask? There are companies which are in and of themselves NOT working to make a profit. Every employee of the company makes a profit, the company continues to do business, but the company itself doesn't try to make a profit. In fact, it's run at a loss.
Because of this, the people who make up the company aren't working towards making a profit for the company, but rather working towards providing a service, which makes a profit. If they worked to make a profit OVER doing their job, it subverts their company.
So such logic is not inescapable, because some companies CAN be structured to operate sucessfully without the need for such morally questionable tactics.
It's time for Uncle Bob's Patent Violation Madness!
That's right...
I'm going to sit in a swing, swing sideways,
and entertain my cat with a laser
pointer!
And if he's not scared, I might even
yell like Tarzan.
of course you can have it both ways. less is more, ignorance is strength.
You signed on for cable service. They're trying as hard as they can to pave your on-ramp to the information superhighway. But should these poor ISPs be made to sit quietly by, while software pirates and terrorists steal their resources? For the love of the Homeguard, what are they to do? They have to stop them from stealing _somehow_.
And yet, when they try to simply make things fairer, by fining these evil people who go over the speed limit of AOL's internet, what happens? Everyone trys to take advantage of them, and wants to be paid less for not speeding.
Should AOL/TW just sit around, and watch it's hard-earned potential future profit projections? I think not. The piracy on the internet has gone to far. And what about those who spread the vicious propaganda that ISPs are providing a connection TO the internet, and not the internet itself? Well, I think every right-minded citizen would agree that they are little better than the terrorists themselves.
Not that I don't agree with the intent of
your idea, or that of the article.
The problems is lawyers playing Mr. Orwell
with the language, so that the Constitution means
whatever they want it to mean, without changing
a single word. Then again, as always, IANAL.
(You know, with the increasingly large number of
lawyers in the US, you'd think I'd see less 'IANAL', not more)
Japan's purpose in the world could be argued to be
One, bring about Japanese artists,
who could then create Anime, with it's promise of orbital lasers.
And two, bring about Japanese scientists,
who could then figure out an actual reason why we should have them.
Thank you, Squaresoft, for the world of FF7.
And thank you, Masahiro Mori, for bringing us that much closer to that world.
This is more like handing someone a handgrenade,
with an attached note saying "pull this pin,"
and that person then proceeding to pull it,
even though they have been told OVER AND OVER
that if they pull the pin on a hand grenade,
it will hurt them.
The virus is dormant, completely harmless
UNTIL SOMEONE RUNS IT.
The fact that someone wrote and engineered it
to spread in this way, and convince people to run
it, they (the writers) should be held accountable.
But just because they are responsible doesn't
mean every other person down the line
isn't responsible as well.
Makes me think of an episode of Space Ghost Coast To Coast (Snatch, I think..)
which goes something like this:
"The rays... Its... Its feeding on the rays!"
"Then don't shoot it!"
"But.. The rays... It's feeding on them! Ohh."
Slashdot Mirror
It's hard to relax...
I don't really care if SCO ceases to exist anymore,
what I care about is whether Darl McBride et al
continue to exist and perpetrate their unique
style of "business"...
as soon as SCO vanishes in a cloud of bankruptcy,
I wouldn't be suprised to see a new company form,
comprised of _exactly the same people_,
but freed of all responsibility for their past
actions, all due to the fact that the 'SCO' name
somehow sheilds them...
IANAL, but why does the
legal system allow such a hideous shell-game to
be played? It does little more than invite
every unethical creep to exploit us to their heart's content.
corporations aren't individuals,
and the owners of the corp should be responsible
for what they do in it's name... because in the end, everything SCO does is the action of PEOPLE,
not some legal fiction.
Guess this is good a place as any to ask...
Is there an official site/email address
where I can submit any kernel oopses I get?
Also, in case this helps anyone else...
If you're running debian woody, and you're
trying to upgrade to one of these kernels,
you're probably going to be hunting around
for a copy of module-init-tools that plays
nicely with woody, instead of sid's copy.
While these are probably bleeding edge
and all, here's two packages I found which
seems to do the trick for woody w/o breaking
dependancies...
modutils
module-init-tools
After installing 'em, the 2.4 modprobe et al
will be renamed modprobe.modutils,
and the 2.6 versions will fallback and call
the 2.4 version if you're running an old kernel.
And if you need proof of the suckage,
try lftp.
a bash-style command line with history,
and much more. THIS is a real cli ftp client.
There's pyrex, a variant of python for writing lowlevel c-code w/o going into C.
And there's also pysco, a specializing compiler, which generates machine code for python, and gets dramatic speed ups.
If there is such a thing as informational anorexia...
I don't want to know about it.
You should take a look at Erlang .
:)
It's much in the style of ML, but with ideas from many other languages thrown in.
And it definitely isn't an "academic" language... it's developed and used by Ericsson
to drive telecommunications systems which have to handle a huge load, and cant be allowed to crash.
Luckily, it's now open source (sorta), and the basic Erlang OTP package
contains about as many side features as Python does
It's inherently parallel (a single program can easily distribute itself across multiple computers),
with concurrencies, and all kinds of other fun 'academic' features...
don't get me started on it's vm's model... it brings tears to my eyes in a way only LISP ever could (that's a good thing).
At the moment, I prefer Python, but only because it's got better C integration...
Erlang works best when only the lowlevel drivers are written in C...
-slackergod
1.Isolate the access point (AP) only it's own
:)
local network, so that all a surfer can see
is the internal firewall.
1a. have a good firewall setup too
2. Allow only know MACS at AP, deny all others.
3. Use SSH, SFTP, tunnel EVERYTHING else through SSL or the like.
OR
1. Use WEP, leave it wide open.
OR
1. Dont use wireless
-slackergod
E-Commerce is just another word for sales over TCP.
...
Performing a similar change to the rest of their patent,
Instead of just getting an n-th click patent, they should
next try for the internet itself...
Given a little reworking of the above quoted piece...
A computer system for conducting electronic commerce, comprising:
A computer system for managing connections to a specific service, comprising:
a data component for storing information relating to a plurality of electronic commerce contexts for a user,
a program for storing the information about all of a given user's connections to the service, for all users.
the information relating to electronic commerce conducted while in that electronic commerce context;
and for logging the contents of all past sessions for a given user;
a component that receives from the user a selection of one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts;
and a program which, given the selection of one of a user's connections, and passes it to
and a component that, after receiving the selection of the one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts,
a program which, after being given the connection,
conducts electronic commerce with the user
proceeds to provide the service to the user
and stores information relating to the conducted electronic commerce
and logs information related to the session
in association with the selected electronic commerce context.
along with information on the connection itself.
I could file a patent and cover phone systems, security/authenication systems, PAM, HTTP, TCP,
oh, and e-commerce.
they should file my version, much more general, and more profitable!
[the preceding was brought to you by the campaign to mock corporate america]
Let's call it "Outside the Asylum"
No matter how horribly the screenplay is botched,
No matter little of the original book and radio show survives,
No matter how inaapropriately cast,
No matter how badly it's done,
No matter how many figures it costs to make,
just remember...
DON'T PANIC.
(This message brought to you by the
Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Division)
Actually it _is_ saying we're the only ones;
anymore will come later.
what was your point?
His seems pretty straight foward...
we can float all the numbers, reasoning,
and statistics we want, and even if we hit
on a line of reasoning that was PROVABLY
correct... someone would still have to sit
there all alone for some time.
and until we make contact and compare,
it may be us. or the ones we meet. or who knows.
this type of question falls outside the realm
of theory, and in the realm of fact...
as in, you can theorize all you want,
but the only way you'll do anything more
than intellectual masturbation is to search
around and say "nope. don't see anything"
"nope. still don't." "oh. there's some little grey
men, there is lift beside us".
Since it is an important question,
and since it can't be analyed very far
theoretically (requiring knowledge of the
structure of the unknown), we have programs
like SETI, to do the searching around.
Sure, they haven't found anything yet,
but that's all we _can_ do.
Movies from PKD stories, that I know of...
'Blade Runner', based off 'Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep', a novel. A good novel,
but the movie is perhaps better.
'Total Recall', based off 'We can remember it
for you wholesale' (a much better short story
than movie, and almost completely different).
'Minority Report', based off a short story
of the same name. Story's good, it's
simple, works great as a movie.
The last two stories are included in the
'Philip K Dick Reader', one of the collections
of his short stories (I think it has
two other good ones, Paycheck and Autofac,
which haven't been made into movies).
For those interested in reading some more of him,
'A Scanner Darkly' and 'The World Jones Made'
are two good novels.
The Pentagon announced their new "Skynet" project.
You don't need to wait for them to become
:)
sentient. By working at one, you're letting
it time-share on your sentience...
Think about it: When you go into work,
sit down in your cubicle, your job is to
think "what is good for the corporation?",
"what does the corporation want?", etc...
Basically, you're thinking the thoughts
that it would think were it truly alive,
and thus, you enable it's "life".
The Matrix is already here, there's
just no other reality to go offline to
To all the university students, on a tight budget,
(like, say, me) consider this:
Someday, you may be the one who needs help,
for a program you thought was completely innocent.
If we don't contribute now, there might not
be anyone to help when that time comes.
-Slackergod
This isn't just a response to the above post,
.
:)
:)
but the ones in this thread, and other ones like it...
You're caught up in saying "he's left" "he's right" "define left" "define right" "good" "evil", whatever...
don't get so carried away assigning labels that you miss the point of the act.
Whatever you decide to label Hollings as (assuming some concensus was reached),
it won't have any effect on what it is he's actually doing. If he calls himself a Democrat,
that doesn't mean his actions will by default be "left wing", same if he calls himself a republican.
Fact is, that's why bills like his have a chance. Government isn't a simple single-axis thing.
Just because something is or isn't left-wing doesn't mean it's ring wing, or center or whatever.
(I'd call attention to US History... the meanings of the labels Democrat and Republican has literally reversed meaning a number of times).
There can be, for instance, acts of total absorbed self-interest.
The SSSCA, whatever, benefits only a section of businesses.
Let me take two extremes. Call them what you will.
One side is pro-individual freedom over government.
They think the government should butt out where it isn't invited.
To these people, I say... the SSSCA DMCA, etc, should frighten you to your very soul...
this is the government beginning to say what you can read, think, do.
Then there's the other extreme, which thinks the government should be there
to help people, protect and support them from their own follies and from each other.
To them, I say... the SSSCA DMCA, etc, is an attempt to subvert the government so that the interests of the few (RIAA, etc)
are enforced upon everyone, to the deteriment of many and the benefit of few.
Who cares which side is which? Both viewpoints are in the end just methods of analysis,
points from which you are viewing a topic, not separate spectral ends of the range of responses
IMNSHO, (In my not so humble opinion) a good Representative Government isn't about the will of the majority or a minority.
Nor is it about their best interests. It's about the best interests of the WHOLE. The majority and the minority.
That is, all the people to whom the law is applied. (No Taxation w/o Representation and all)
From this viewpoint, a law is bad when it damages the whole of the people, no matter how few or how many it may protect or help.
The *CA, whatever copyright interests they may protect, serve to diminish the
creative drive of all the people, howsoever subtly or slowly:
Say I sat down, and had a thought. To me, it might be revolutionary.
Say it was some kind of algorithm. Maybe someelse has patented it,
so I can't commercially profit from it.
The intent of these laws is to deny me the freedom to even use this algorithm
ONLY ON MY OWN COMPUTER, ONLY FOR ME. An algorithm like, say, a non-drm OS
Just because we can only think of one thing to fix a problem, doesn't mean it should be done:
Cutting off the arm to cure gangrene used to be an acceptable idea.
Nowdays, we use antibiotics. At the time, it was acceptable: nothing at the time was likely to replace it within the (short) expected life-span of the patient.
But laws are different. They endure, (at least in the US) long past the time they have been forgotten,
long past the time that common sense has moved on, and found a better solution.
What we set into law now will linger on, and not be so easy to tear down.
It's force will remain, even when other options exist. And the nature of the *CA laws is such that they will themselves prevent
any such options from ever seeing the light of day, mutally exclusive memes, much as the ideas open-source- and drm- OSes.
Whew. Sorry bout the rant
-Slackergod
Total nonsense?
Sure, you could pursue fusion.
But we may not get fusion. Should we wait
for the PERFECT energy source while we rely on
the bad ones, unstead of using a better one,
while we pursue the goal of fusion, which
(while theortically realizeable) doesn't even
have a timetable associated w/ it?
Furthermore, sure, the short-term costs would be
large, but what are the costs for building and planning a new nuclear reactor?
Solar cells on earth? We have clouds. We have day and night. The moon (thanks to an astronomical quirk) has permanent day and night. Much better
efficiency that we can get. Store it there.
Send it over, microwave style, when the terran
receiver is in place.
Or bounce it off a satellite.
Just because you can conceive of better long term ideas, why should we not pursue a better short term idea, rather than stick to one that's actually harming us?
-Slackergod
If a company decides it's sucess is
reliant on attracting investors,
then of course it must make a profit.
But if this is the case, then it's
already decided that as part of it's business model, BEFORE the cycle even started.
So it's still their choice.
And just because they CAN use such a business
model does not make them right in doing it.
If they chose one that says we make a
profit because customers want to buy our
products, they don't have to have investors.
If the investors still want to invest, fine.
No person or company has a "right" to make a
profit.
The fact is, when a company uses logic like yours,
it means their job is no longer to make widgets,
but money. At which point, they are (by definition) no longer interested in the moral
implications of their actions (ie, what they're
producing), just the bottom line.
It is the fact that that attitude itself is
so completely devoid of moral value which is
disgusting.
And how else COULD a company survive, you ask?
There are companies which are in and of themselves
NOT working to make a profit. Every employee
of the company makes a profit, the company
continues to do business, but the company
itself doesn't try to make a profit.
In fact, it's run at a loss.
Because of this, the people who make up the
company aren't working towards making
a profit for the company, but rather working
towards providing a service, which makes
a profit. If they worked to make a profit OVER
doing their job, it subverts their company.
So such logic is not inescapable, because some
companies CAN be structured to operate sucessfully
without the need for such morally questionable
tactics.
-Slackergod
It's time for Uncle Bob's Patent Violation Madness!
That's right...
I'm going to sit in a swing, swing sideways,
and entertain my cat with a laser pointer!
And if he's not scared, I might even yell like Tarzan.
Mr. Olson, you sir, are a genius.
load "linux",8,1
You never know, it could be true...
Such fabrication is an established government practice and all.
Then again, is that just what they want us to think?
-Slackergod
of course you can have it both ways.
less is more, ignorance is strength.
You signed on for cable service.
They're trying as hard as they can
to pave your on-ramp to the information
superhighway. But should these poor
ISPs be made to sit quietly by, while
software pirates and terrorists
steal their resources? For the love of the
Homeguard, what are they to do? They
have to stop them from stealing _somehow_.
And yet, when they try to simply make things
fairer, by fining these evil people who
go over the speed limit of AOL's internet,
what happens? Everyone trys to take advantage
of them, and wants to be paid less for not
speeding.
Should AOL/TW just sit around, and watch
it's hard-earned potential future profit projections? I think not. The piracy on
the internet has gone to far. And what about
those who spread the vicious propaganda that ISPs
are providing a connection TO the internet,
and not the internet itself? Well, I think
every right-minded citizen would agree that
they are little better than the terrorists
themselves.
(DISCLAIMER: It's a joke, mkay? SARCASM.)
-Slackergod
But they are legal citizens.
Read half-way down.
Not that I don't agree with the intent of
your idea, or that of the article.
The problems is lawyers playing Mr. Orwell
with the language, so that the Constitution means
whatever they want it to mean, without changing
a single word. Then again, as always, IANAL.
(You know, with the increasingly large number of
lawyers in the US, you'd think I'd see less 'IANAL', not more)
-Slackergod
Japan's purpose in the world could be argued to be
One, bring about Japanese artists,
who could then create Anime, with it's promise of orbital lasers.
And two, bring about Japanese scientists,
who could then figure out an actual reason why we should have them.
Thank you, Squaresoft, for the world of FF7.
And thank you, Masahiro Mori, for bringing us that much closer to that world.
-Slackergod
This is more like handing someone a handgrenade,
with an attached note saying "pull this pin,"
and that person then proceeding to pull it,
even though they have been told OVER AND OVER
that if they pull the pin on a hand grenade,
it will hurt them.
The virus is dormant, completely harmless
UNTIL SOMEONE RUNS IT.
The fact that someone wrote and engineered it
to spread in this way, and convince people to run
it, they (the writers) should be held accountable.
But just because they are responsible doesn't
mean every other person down the line
isn't responsible as well.
Makes me think of an episode of Space Ghost Coast To Coast (Snatch, I think..)
which goes something like this:
"The rays... Its... Its feeding on the rays!"
"Then don't shoot it!"
"But.. The rays... It's feeding on them! Ohh."