The only real change is that instead of having a virtual monopoly on such advances, American advances are now beginning to share the stage with other countries.
Ha. Funny. Well, that, and everything's patented to death and your patent lawyers are enabled (read: running amok), not to mention "Imaginary Property", and your tort law system is seriously fscked, and you're exporting criminal liability for civil offences to $ALLTHEWORLD and $PRESUMINGTOEXTRADITEANYOFFENDERINANYPARTOFTHEWORLDBACKTOFACECRIMESINTHEUSA, & etc.
Other than that, everything's peachy. Oh, except you've outsourced/offshored damned near everything, and your military's budget dwarfs pretty much everything else you do except (?) Social Security.
You'll just be a minor footnote in a history book somewhere "United States of America.....See: Slavery, Drugs, McDonalds, Disneyland. Decline and fall..."
They're not finished yet. Rome conquered a third (?) of the Earth's surface. The MafiAA is intent on getting it all, and they're winning.
They did. Theirs was better than anything that'd come before. Unfortunately, they forgot how to maintain it, or some slick talking salesman sold them some snake oil.
A few thoughts come to mind... "Follow the money" especially. It appears to go from Hollywood (RIAA, MPAA, MafiAA) through the US Congress and the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There's a revolving door between those five/six entities (ie. Chris Dodd --> MPAA, MPAA chief lobbyist --> DoJ). In Canada, the Tories are attempting to push a clone of the US' DMCA here, something they fought vociferously when the previous Liberal government was pushing it. Britain appears to be even further along. The US Trade Representative is pushing the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) in collusion with the legacy entertainment industry. They only grudgingly allow members of Congress to see what the TPP plan is, while his partners in the entertainment industry have full, unfettered on-line access.
This is happening all over the world in many countries. In France, it's HADOPI. New Zealand has a three strikes plan in place. In the US, ISPs voluntarily came up with their own six strikes policy to head off threatened legislation.
Our democracies are being bought and sold by deep pocketed legacy entertainment industries. They're getting their bought politicos to pass laws to criminalize what has until recently been civil issues, and we'll be living in "1984" because of this Regulatory Capture overreach that poisons our democratic institutions.
I say boycott them (Hollywood), but that appears to be an empty threat.
... feel free to add counter links as why people know best and I'd be happy to discuss
No links are necessary. Just re-read the comments up to this point. Hell, just re-read TFS. By my count, we've now heard from posters from at least three countries (USA, Australia, Great Britain) who believe their governments are beholden to special interests, not their electorate or taxpayers, and no-one appears to have any clue as to what to do about it. I'll add Canada for four. Why the hell would you lobby to pay more for clearly dysfunctional democracy? Because they might fix a few potholes while we're all sold further down the river?
I just wanted to be done, the owner didn't care, so I kludged it and went on my way. The thing is a lot of setups end up like this and the fact that so many setups aren't the "ideal" and SSL is in a way complex by design... I think a lot of things just end up being kludged and will remain broken [until] something bad happens.
That methodology is giving the rest of us a bad name. That sort of execution is why I left Windows. It would be better not to do it if the only way you can get it done is to kludge it. Your employer/client is not the only one whose dick will be hanging out in the wind if you get it wrong. His customers' will be too.
Come on, mods. Flamebait? He's wrong, I'll give you that, but he's expressing his opinion is all. The Android app market has looked pretty dodgy from where I sit ever since it began. Linux is cool, Android is cool, and shitty implementation is shitty implementation no matter how you cut it.
Large fines to the telephone company that passed on the robocall.
What is this, the 1940s? The robots don't call up the girls at the exchange and [ask] to be put through.
No, because it's all automated. Machines do it all. Machines that log their actions in order to bill customers. Since it's all logged for billing purposes, it should be simple to backtrack to the initiator. If it's not possible, they then know what to fix to make that possible.
I'd be happy to forgo the hefty fines as long as they could show they're gaining on the problem, the bad guys are losing, and I'm not being billed for and losing minutes to them.
Europeans aren't billed for incoming calls or messages. The initiator is billed instead. How the hell did we end up this boneheaded system instead?
A good person is one who does good. A bad person is one who does bad.
so if you were an actor and had to shoot someone in a scene, and i replaced your prop gun with a real loaded weapon so you shot them for real you would be a bad person?
You've a very shallow definition of "does". Shallow as a pane of glass.
Great and thoughtful post. Thanks. Allow me to quibble a bit. Or maybe I'm just playing wit'cha; you judge.
Just whose definition of "Right" and "Wrong" are we going to use?
Well, mine, of course silly. None of the rest of you appear to have a clue.
Jesus had no problem with slavery...
Nor do I. Earlier in life, I held many jobs which felt a lot like slavery. I'm sure T. Jefferson's slaves were often treated better than I was. If I were allowed to actually sell myself into slavery, it would've made for a more honest transaction.
So rather than trying to hang people in the Fun-House mirror that morality is, seeing as there is no "Morality" outside of human interpretation. It would behoove us to come up with something a little more utilitarian, and a wee bit less subjective.
I think Aristotle already got that one for us. We love that which we see in others that we already appreciate in ourselves (or something like that). The problem with morality is it's always a moving target. Shivving Nazis in the back in Warsaw in 1939 would have been a dream job for me had I been alive then. I'm pretty sure that's illegal now, not to mention frowned upon.
Personally, I vote for workability.
Ah, a pragmatist. "Whatever works." I'm an idealist. "Things as they could, and should, be." If you have a wife and kids, pragmatism is the only way to go ("Happy wife makes a happy life"). Howard Hughes (and Neil Armstrong and Jimmie Doolittle and Marie Curie and Curtis LeMay...) wouldn't have been happy being a pragmatist.
For the child rapist, molester, abuser, we have a city, on an island.
Heinlein's Coventry. I'm all for it.
You ever notice, nobody has a problem with gravity.
I beg to differ. I've been fighting gravity all my life. I hated skinning my knees as a kid, I hated falling off bicycles, and re-entry prior to safe landing on the surface of planets pees me off no end. You blow all that energy getting up there; you'd think it was energy banked for the future, but no! Damn.
Workability should aspire to be like that. Simple, quick, compassionate, and resolute. You just remove the source of difficulty and treat people like human beings until they prove otherwise.
On that, we agree; basic game theory. Don't forget to have fun doing it, though.
Oh, and life begins in October; Post-Season Baseball!
But being tormented on facebook, youtube, etc. allows tormentors to reach into your private world as well away from school.
We need a new ethic for them. "Blow it off, kid! That !@#$ don't matter. That dipshit is on the other side of the world from you, and is just trying to get a rise out of you. Don't fall for it. Just stand tall."
If you think you could work against something like that by "just being nice" you're sadly mistaken.
I'm not a parent, but I think in that situation, I'd just try to hug her to death (figuratively). "It''s okay. Don't worry about it. It'll go away soon, before you know it...."
Slashdot Mirror
The only real change is that instead of having a virtual monopoly on such advances, American advances are now beginning to share the stage with other countries.
Ha. Funny. Well, that, and everything's patented to death and your patent lawyers are enabled (read: running amok), not to mention "Imaginary Property", and your tort law system is seriously fscked, and you're exporting criminal liability for civil offences to $ALLTHEWORLD and $PRESUMINGTOEXTRADITEANYOFFENDERINANYPARTOFTHEWORLDBACKTOFACECRIMESINTHEUSA, & etc.
Other than that, everything's peachy. Oh, except you've outsourced/offshored damned near everything, and your military's budget dwarfs pretty much everything else you do except (?) Social Security.
But who's counting?
Bronze/aluminum age -- agrarian
Aluminum says:
The metal was first produced in 1825 in an impure form by Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted.
which I believe is long after the Bronze Age. Yeah, even the Romans used Alum as a powder, but not as a metal.
Just a quibble.
You'll just be a minor footnote in a history book somewhere "United States of America.....See: Slavery, Drugs, McDonalds, Disneyland. Decline and fall..."
They're not finished yet. Rome conquered a third (?) of the Earth's surface. The MafiAA is intent on getting it all, and they're winning.
I totally misread "A Former NSW Chief Judge" as "A Former NSFW Chief Judge".
Meanwhile, things are looking up in the Philippines due to talks between MILF and the government which could lead to the end of their conflict.
What?!?
So you've gotten rid of a "troublemaker" and you don't have to pay to deal with them.
Those so-called troublemakers are usually taxpayers too, as are their progeny. Way to shoot yourself in the foot!
You misspelled trial and incineration.
That's funny. :-)
BTW, I highly recommend Bruce Willis' "Surrogates" (hope that link works) which seems highly apropos.
The vast majority of them are fine, hardworking & God-fearing consumers.
FTFY. Just like they (whoever they are) want us to be.
You Americans thought you had freedom how cute :-)
They did. Theirs was better than anything that'd come before. Unfortunately, they forgot how to maintain it, or some slick talking salesman sold them some snake oil.
Welcome to the revolution. :-P
Always a cogent argument, that. Well, for a five year old I mean.
A few thoughts come to mind ... "Follow the money" especially. It appears to go from Hollywood (RIAA, MPAA, MafiAA) through the US Congress and the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There's a revolving door between those five/six entities (ie. Chris Dodd --> MPAA, MPAA chief lobbyist --> DoJ). In Canada, the Tories are attempting to push a clone of the US' DMCA here, something they fought vociferously when the previous Liberal government was pushing it. Britain appears to be even further along. The US Trade Representative is pushing the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) in collusion with the legacy entertainment industry. They only grudgingly allow members of Congress to see what the TPP plan is, while his partners in the entertainment industry have full, unfettered on-line access.
This is happening all over the world in many countries. In France, it's HADOPI. New Zealand has a three strikes plan in place. In the US, ISPs voluntarily came up with their own six strikes policy to head off threatened legislation.
Our democracies are being bought and sold by deep pocketed legacy entertainment industries. They're getting their bought politicos to pass laws to criminalize what has until recently been civil issues, and we'll be living in "1984" because of this Regulatory Capture overreach that poisons our democratic institutions.
I say boycott them (Hollywood), but that appears to be an empty threat.
The new terrorist is anyone who isn't consuming his proper allotment and paying his bills.
Hmm. That describes me at the moment, and with the first snow of a Canadian winter falling now, I might welcome being renditioned to Cuba.
Bribery is the geek's all-purpose explanation for any legal decision ...
Why are you bringing up bribery when this sub-discussion is about purported threats to politicians if they didn't toe the party line?
You'd have my vote, if I weren't on the wrong side of the 49th parallel.
... feel free to add counter links as why people know best and I'd be happy to discuss
No links are necessary. Just re-read the comments up to this point. Hell, just re-read TFS. By my count, we've now heard from posters from at least three countries (USA, Australia, Great Britain) who believe their governments are beholden to special interests, not their electorate or taxpayers, and no-one appears to have any clue as to what to do about it. I'll add Canada for four. Why the hell would you lobby to pay more for clearly dysfunctional democracy? Because they might fix a few potholes while we're all sold further down the river?
Wake up.
It's the same old troll, so no, it is a flamebait.
It's trolling, not flamebait, as you just admitted. Maybe I'm just feeling pedantic this morning (this morning?!?).
I just wanted to be done, the owner didn't care, so I kludged it and went on my way. The thing is a lot of setups end up like this and the fact that so many setups aren't the "ideal" and SSL is in a way complex by design ... I think a lot of things just end up being kludged and will remain broken [until] something bad happens.
That methodology is giving the rest of us a bad name. That sort of execution is why I left Windows. It would be better not to do it if the only way you can get it done is to kludge it. Your employer/client is not the only one whose dick will be hanging out in the wind if you get it wrong. His customers' will be too.
Thanks a lot.
Come on, mods. Flamebait? He's wrong, I'll give you that, but he's expressing his opinion is all. The Android app market has looked pretty dodgy from where I sit ever since it began. Linux is cool, Android is cool, and shitty implementation is shitty implementation no matter how you cut it.
Large fines to the telephone company that passed on the robocall.
What is this, the 1940s? The robots don't call up the girls at the exchange and [ask] to be put through.
No, because it's all automated. Machines do it all. Machines that log their actions in order to bill customers. Since it's all logged for billing purposes, it should be simple to backtrack to the initiator. If it's not possible, they then know what to fix to make that possible.
I'd be happy to forgo the hefty fines as long as they could show they're gaining on the problem, the bad guys are losing, and I'm not being billed for and losing minutes to them.
Europeans aren't billed for incoming calls or messages. The initiator is billed instead. How the hell did we end up this boneheaded system instead?
Child porn (aka the picture of Amanda's breasts) is a felony.
That's the sort of attitude that tied what's her name up in the courts for years for a "wardrobe malfunction."
Why in hell are we fussing about this stuff in the 21st Century? It ties up the courts, it leads kids to kill themselves, ...
A good person is one who does good. A bad person is one who does bad.
so if you were an actor and had to shoot someone in a scene, and i replaced your prop gun with a real loaded weapon so you shot them for real you would be a bad person?
You've a very shallow definition of "does". Shallow as a pane of glass.
Great and thoughtful post. Thanks. Allow me to quibble a bit. Or maybe I'm just playing wit'cha; you judge.
Just whose definition of "Right" and "Wrong" are we going to use?
Well, mine, of course silly. None of the rest of you appear to have a clue.
Jesus had no problem with slavery ...
Nor do I. Earlier in life, I held many jobs which felt a lot like slavery. I'm sure T. Jefferson's slaves were often treated better than I was. If I were allowed to actually sell myself into slavery, it would've made for a more honest transaction.
So rather than trying to hang people in the Fun-House mirror that morality is, seeing as there is no "Morality" outside of human interpretation. It would behoove us to come up with something a little more utilitarian, and a wee bit less subjective.
I think Aristotle already got that one for us. We love that which we see in others that we already appreciate in ourselves (or something like that). The problem with morality is it's always a moving target. Shivving Nazis in the back in Warsaw in 1939 would have been a dream job for me had I been alive then. I'm pretty sure that's illegal now, not to mention frowned upon.
Personally, I vote for workability.
Ah, a pragmatist. "Whatever works." I'm an idealist. "Things as they could, and should, be." If you have a wife and kids, pragmatism is the only way to go ("Happy wife makes a happy life"). Howard Hughes (and Neil Armstrong and Jimmie Doolittle and Marie Curie and Curtis LeMay ...) wouldn't have been happy being a pragmatist.
For the child rapist, molester, abuser, we have a city, on an island.
Heinlein's Coventry. I'm all for it.
You ever notice, nobody has a problem with gravity.
I beg to differ. I've been fighting gravity all my life. I hated skinning my knees as a kid, I hated falling off bicycles, and re-entry prior to safe landing on the surface of planets pees me off no end. You blow all that energy getting up there; you'd think it was energy banked for the future, but no! Damn.
Workability should aspire to be like that. Simple, quick, compassionate, and resolute. You just remove the source of difficulty and treat people like human beings until they prove otherwise.
On that, we agree; basic game theory. Don't forget to have fun doing it, though.
Oh, and life begins in October; Post-Season Baseball!
But being tormented on facebook, youtube, etc. allows tormentors to reach into your private world as well away from school.
We need a new ethic for them. "Blow it off, kid! That !@#$ don't matter. That dipshit is on the other side of the world from you, and is just trying to get a rise out of you. Don't fall for it. Just stand tall."
Actually, I have noticed that Google Reader will be able to pull some kind of feed regardless of if the requested site has RSS or not.
Oddly (I know), I try to avoid Google. I don't hate them, but see no need for them. I prefer ixquick.
Parent is NOT a troll (currently at -1 Troll at the time I post this) ...
Still is. Sigh.
Thx mon. If your daughter ever needs a dispassionate shoulder, mine's here for her. Does she want to learn perl programming? :-)
If you think you could work against something like that by "just being nice" you're sadly mistaken.
I'm not a parent, but I think in that situation, I'd just try to hug her to death (figuratively). "It''s okay. Don't worry about it. It'll go away soon, before you know it. ..."
Gahd, it must be hell to be a kid these days.