1. 1875+95=1970. Still have 20 years' difference; perhaps this is why proposed extensions have only been for 20 years at a time? Right, but if you extend copyright from 1970 by 20 years, you get 1990, which puts the 1989 release date within the copyright period. I think the original poster's point was that the law allows retrospective extensions.
2. If the terms were to somehow overlap, the process thirdrock describes is a good one. However, you should sue Disney for the amount of revenue, not profit. Stan Lee [slashdot.org] can tell you that even wildly successful movies make no money. I'm sure the Disney Corp made a profit on The Little Mermaid. It might be harder to make a case for the revenue than the profit, but this would probably lead to 'creative accounting' that minimises the profit made (like that poor guy who wrote Jerry Maguire(?) and the studio fudged the figures so he wouldn't get a royalty payment).
Someone mod the parent up and answer the question if you can
Afterall copyright extensions are retroactive for all, right? Maybe that's the path Lessig should take:)
Agreed. Agreed. It would require something like the following process. 1. To find someone who was a named beneficiary of the estate when Anderson died. 2. Establish a fighting fund where contributions can be made via the web. Then get the word out to slashdot/civil rights crowd. 3. Apply for copyright extension on The Little Mermaid. 4. If granted, sue Disney for copyright infringement, ask for an amount equivelent to Disney's profit on the Movie. 5. Add profits from suit to fighting fund. Repeat steps 1-5 until Disney and other greedy corporations seek to have the law changed. 6. Use the change in the law as 'thin edge of the wedge' for copyright reform.
Bad laws are the worst form of Tyranny - Edmund Burke 1729-1797
That has to be the best post I have seen on Slashdot for six months.
HELLO ILLITERATE AMERICANS, "lose" is to misplace or be berefit of an item and "loose" is the opposite of "tight".
People don't "loose" their jobs, "loose" their lawsuits or anything else, THEY LOSE THEM.
And this... It is bad enough everyone in Mexico is stealing our work, now India.
In the six years after NAFTA was implemented, 400,000 unskilled labour jobs went over the border to Mexico, but the additional trade generated over 1,000,000 jobs that were mostly "white collar". What that meant was, if you could get away from the TV for a couple hours a week, you could re-skill, and get a job in the new job sector at twice the pay rate as your previous labour intensive back-breaking health destroying job. But that would have required EFFORT, something Americans no longer seem to think applies to them.
I also wonder if about 10 or 15 guys with just flame-throwers could take down a steel structure from the bottom. Err, no. Not even burning 10 tonnes of jet fuel would accomplish that aim. Perhaps you should investigate the melting temperature of steel and the combustion temperature of fuel.
The south tower went down first because the plan hit further down and their was more pressure on the steel rods.
Riiiiight.
15 or 20 guys with flame throwers could go into the garage or basement of a big building and just heat up the support rods. Under the enormous pressure, it would not take long for them to buckle Yeah, I'm sure building security wouldn't notice 15 or 20 guys carrying flame throwers into the garage.
Or at least place dynamite on each one. Sure, just pull it out of your pocket, stick it to the support with gaffer tape, light the fuse and run. That would work.
I fear the sears tower. I just have a funny feeling about it. You should see someone about your irrational fear of the sears tower.
Someone may bring in, god knows what in our harbars. Yes, it might be something incredible, like information on the world outside the US, or drinkable coffee or edible food.
Some terrorist buying lots of suitcase sized nuclear weapons in the blackmarket in russia. Bin Laden claimed to have bought several of them for several million each. Did he tell you that himself, or was you hearin that on the Tee Vee?
Leaked classifieds mentioned that insiders from AL-Qaeda talked about destroying America in 3 waves.
Were those New York Times or USA Today classifieds?
Wanted Angry young men for new organisation currently in the planning stage for second wave of operations. No experience necessary. Must have life insurance. Call 555-7856 and ask for Osama.
Bin Laden likes to do one act more destructive then the other. What do you base this statement on? Leaked classifieds? Did CNN tell you? Or did you come to this unverifyable, idiotic conclusion on your own?
My guess is next he will take out more buildings. Yeah, and maybe next time he will strike buildings that are strategically important, like the stock exchange, rather than buildings with a brand spanking new insurance policy and a 100 million dollar tax lien.
Hardly unique to the ancient Egyptians. Beer (and wine) have been used throughout Europe, North African and West Asia for this purpose. So much so that whilst Europeans evolved the ability to detoxify alcohol people from parts of the world such as China often cannot tolerate alcohol at all. Because the ancient Chinese made water safe to drink by making tea.
Errp! Wrong, but thank-you for playing. The Chinese developed beer, wine and distilled spirits about 1000 years before Europeans. However, after Kung Fu Tsu (Confucius), it wasn't considered 'proper' in polite society to drink alcohol. After the end of the Tang dynasty, alchohol consumption decreased to almost nothing when the Europeans arrived. It was still used in both cooking and the extraction of active ingredients from medicinal herbs. In fact, the Chinese character for medicine contains the character 'jiu' which means wine/alcohol/distilled spirits.
Yeah, I'm fully aware of "roaming" being a purely administrative issue. (If one company owned all the towers, it wouldn't make much sense that they'd care which tower your call happened to be carried on.)
Which is the case in Japan, Australia, and Canada I think.
My point, though, is that with a large enough country, you'll most likely have several competing providers - and thereby such hassles as roaming charges. Cell towers aren't exactly cheap to install and maintain. When you cover a large number of square miles, it starts to cost much more to send your installation and repair techs out to all of those remote locations.
That's true enough. In Australia the main Telco was until recently government-owned, so they just put up a tower at each of the main exchanges. We also have a much smaller population distribution than the US. Almost 50% of our land is uninhabited.
Japan may have much more population density, but at least they don't have some company trying to maintain a group of cell towers over 1,500 miles away.
Well, they do actually. Japan is about 1500 miles end to end, just not side to side. In total area it is about the same size as California , and it has better coverage than California.
In the U.S. - ISDN has generally been a rip-off. $149 a month or so for 128K of bandwidth was the norm here in the Midwest. Our telcos didn't want to offer it until the federal trade commission ruled that they had to offer it everywhere by a certain date. It required a number of phone switch upgrades, so they wanted all the ISDN users to pay for those upgrade costs.
We also had the same problem with ISDN, because of analog exchanges. Now ISDN is cheap, and nobody wants it because of co-ax and ADSL. This was more a matter of government policy though.
There was this huge gomi pile of abandoned electronics that were almost brand new but no longer wanted; because there was a new model that just came out that had more gee wiz features.
No, it's because in Japan the manufacturers have made it so expensive to have an item out of warranty repaired that you might as well buy a new one.
Eeep! Wrong, but thank you for playing. When I lived in Japan, the Gomi we got was in perfect working order, it just wasn't the latest model with the latest features. Given that the Japanese don't have 3000 sqft of empty space to fill up with junk like Americans seem to, and add to that Japanese people don't generally buy second-hand goods, out into the trash it went.
Well, you also have to keep in mind, it's *far* easiesr providing seamless coverage to the relatively small geography of the Japanese islands than to the entire United States.
Ha ha. This one should have been modded up as funny. We have (almost) seamless coverage in Australia, and we are the same landmass size as the US (if you exclude Alaska) with 1/10th of the population.
Plus, Canada is the same size as the US, and as far as I can tell, they have better cell-phone coverage than you do.
If Japan was the same size as the U.S., I suspect you'd see them dealing with issues like "roaming" too.
Roaming has got nothing to do with distance, it's about going across service providers. If you have one big cell phone company with lots of towers connected by fibre optics then there is no "roaming", just switching. "Roaming" is when your call is routed through a tower that doesn't belong to your provider. And most of the problems with that are admisistrative, not technological.
I agree, though, that they probably have an advantage by standardizing on one cellular technology. It always seemed odd to me that we have carriers (such as VoiceStream wireless) in the U.S. supporting GSM phone standards, while everyone else does CDMA.
It's especially odd as CDMA was developed in the US.
Finally, back on the topic of the thread, China's communal culture is more amenable to Free Software in many ways than it is to a foreign monopoly like Microsoft (remember, the British ruled China with an iron fist through trade monopolies, so this is more offensive to them than to us, which is saying a lot because monopolies are, or should be, very offensive to anyone who values a free market).
Not true, in every way. 1. The British NEVER, I repeat NEVER ruled China. Yes, they forced the concession of Hong Kong and the New Territories, and yes, the forced the concession of trading 'quarters' in ShangHai that were under British law. But Britain was never the ruling government of China. 2. The concessions mentioned above were not brought about through a trade monopoly by the British, quite the contrary. It was China that had the trade monopoly in Tea. It was China that dictated trade terms through their monopoly. That is, they would only trade Tea for Silver. The British were fighting a currency war in Europe, trying to make silver the monetary unit of choice, because Spain, France and Holland had so much gold. That is why the Opium trade began. To return silver to British coffers. 3. Britain did not have a trade monopoly in Opium. Opium was sold to China by the French, and the Americans as well.
And, last but not least, China is really only communist in name... its economy is as capitalist as any western economy (which isn't saying a lot if you look at any western economy closely... think corporate welfare, which is rampent, protectionist tarrifs, legislated monopolies, and so forth, all of which undermine or even eliminate free markets).
Not quite, but certainly moving in that direction. There are still a large number of State Enterprises that are protected more than their counterparts would be in most 'capitalist' countries. But given the recent steel and agriculture subsidies granted by the Shrub Administration, I would say that China's economy is almost as capitalist as the US economy, but falls a LONG way behind Hong Kong.
Phew! This post has so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with this...
If Microsoft is the most incompetent company in IT, then how come they have 40 billion USD in the bank, and by market cap is still the largest company in the world?
One has nothing to do with the other. Competence in IT means the ability to build good products (in this case, software). Competence in cash flow and market cap means the ability to SELL products. You don't have to look very far back in free-market-capitalism to see that when a new technology is introduced to the market, as long as there is any advantage to be had, people will buy anything. For example, take cars, in the early years of the car industry, cars sucked. Noisy, smelly, ineffecient, ineffective and just plain dangerous. As the percentage of the population who owned cars reached saturation point, the market 'wised up', and started shopping for qualities such as safety (because there was a 1 in 4 chance of dying in a car crash), economy (because Iran had the nerve to think it could charge whatever it wanted for oil), and handling/compactness (because it started getting hard to park in the cities). Microsoft are like those early car companies and those early railroaders. They caught the wave, using software that they either bought (CP/M - Seatle Computer Company), copied (Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Windows, 4th Dimension, Navigator) or boldly stole (Stac Electronics). This makes them a very competent marketing company, but not a very competent IT company.
As for XBox etc. Microsoft has had tons of mediocre performing products and services, and has sunk hundreds of millions into failed ventures before, including a series of dot-coms. Some of them were quite high profile failures. X-Box won't be the first, and unlikely the last.
If you are referring to the WebMD/Healtheon play, then that was simply a monopoly/internet strategy defense. They were planning to move into that market themselves, but were not ready to do so. So it actually was a success.
Microsoft doesn't set standards by press release.
Not quite true. Ever heard of FUD?
Microsoft sets standards by buying out key players, by leveraging their monopoly situation (hence the findings of facts in the anti-trust trial, showing that they did break the law), by sinking millions or billions into marketing and sales of products that will never turn a profit (Internet Explorer, anyone?), or that will only turn a profit after years of losses.
Microsoft does not and will not ever sell Internet Explorer. To do so would be idiotic. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's Trojan Horse into the web-services, online vertical markets. Once they are firmly established in those markets, they will even give away Windows OS for free. Windows OS will become Internet Explorer's filing clerk. IE will have all sorts of technology built into it that will 'enhance the user's browsing experience'. What that means in non-marketroid language is that to pay your bills, have food delivered, do your banking, and manage your companies accounts, you will need to have Internet Explorer, because all of the Big Internet Service Companies (tm) will offer very convenient services that will only be available if you have the latest Internet Explorer technology. And to build those special services, you will need to pay Microsoft a service fee. Perhaps per transaction, or month.
As much as I despise Microsoft, I think you're naive if you think Microsoft is incompetent, and I think you're naive if you think Microsoft will fail. They may end up losing their hegemony on OS front some day, but the OS is only a small share of their profits, and a decreasing one at that.
As I said above, they will soon give the OS away for free. They are moving their whole business away from shrinkwrap software. Which is great! Their software sucked anyway.
I don't think Microsoft particularly worry if they EVER make a profit on XBox. Regardless of whether they make a profit, it will strengthen their brand as a viable source of electronics devices or appliances, and may allow them easier entries into other, related markets - this is the kind of integration of products and marketing that Microsoft is best at (and much better at than they are at technical innovation).
I disagree. I believe Microsoft are positioning themselves to take the online gaming market. First they get lots of X-Boxes out there. That creates a platform. Once there is a platform to sell to, game developers build games for it. It is actually easier to sell games on the platform with the least games available, as long as it's a good game. Right, so you've got the platform. Next, you set yourself up as the multiplayer online game provider of choice for the X-Box platform. You do this by creating a game-server first then hit the market hard with a huge piece of iron in every major city in every timezone in the world, plus lots of hype and FUD. OK, so now you have millions of gamers coming online 24/7/365. Do the math. That's 61320 billable hours per year. Let's assume that Microsoft charge you 3 cents per game, and the average game lasts half an hour. That 6 cents per hour. Here is that translated into dollars per annum, given X number of gamers using the system at any one time.
Not a bad little earner. And once you have totally taken that market, you can start earning a profit on the box again.
Even so, I doubt XBox will flop if Microsoft really care about it. Microsoft make enough money to give the damn thing away for free, and still stay in the black. They can easily destroy the console market and crush both Sony and Nintendo in a price war if they see the game console market as important enough to justify it - 40 billion USD could cover quite an amount of free XBox units.
While this is true, it won't happen. The lowest they would sell the box at is cost. They cannot go below break-even. Why? Because it is vitally important for Microsoft to keep their stock price going up. Their recent tiff with the SEC shows how paranoid they were about earnings reports. They do this for three reasons. 1. Programming talent is held in the belly of the beast by the hypnotic trance of getting rich through stock options. If this goes, then the best programmers will leave to do something interesting with their career, as opposed to bloating bloatware even more. 2. Microsoft buys their own stock. Part of MS profitability is the healthy balance sheet shown share price valuations that Microsoft corporation owns. 3. Microsoft don't pay dividends. People who buy MS stock, do so for capital gains, not dividend returns. If there were no capital gains, and no dividends, shareholders would start a selling frenzy.
a) they know the market, and b) they have weakened their opponents more by fear, uncertainty and doubt (by the very threat of a massive Microsoft war campain against their competitors).
Perhaps someone should write something that translates MS-HTML into real HTML on-the-fly so that it can be read and displayed accurately in Mozilla.
That's a brilliant idea !! Just one problem though, which you cover here...
I know that isn't what the Mozilla people want, because it doesn't promote standards, but I think we need to fight MS on their own terms
And the solution to this is... the translation programme doesn't need to go into the browser, it could be built into the proxy server. If you could build translation intelligence into the proxy server, let's call it RH-Proxy (for Real HTML Proxy), then once you get RH-Proxy installed on the biggest ISP's, like AOL, then the problem is solved. AOL can then switch to Mozilla browsing technology without breaking any websites for their customers.
The only thing though is that this would start a feature war between M$ and the people who make RH-Proxy. If you can get enough Open Source coders working on RH-Proxy, then the resources that M$ spends on adding new non-standards-compliant features to a product they give away will cause a severe economic drain on the companies profitability, until it becomes untenable, business wise, to continue.
I might head over to sourceforge now to start up a project:)
The unfortunate thing about this is that it is really a market failure that has produced this situation. You have on the one hand expensive software that places your company's IP, and profitability at high risk, and on the other hand, free software that contains significantly less risk. What's wrong with this picture? Market failure. In this case a lack of good information, and lots of very good (bad) marketing.
How the clueless economics graduates will reconcile this with their idea that the free market is 'perfect', I dont know, but the market can correct this situation the same way it has produced it. How? By making better informed purchasing decisions when it comes to software.
Surely if the market can 'wise up', then the better, more robust, more secure software will afford companies who rely on computing technology an advantage over their competitors.
This will improve the quality of software from ALL vendors, including Microsoft. After all, Microsoft was only selling what the market would bear. If the market has a lower tolerance of poor quality software, then the better quality software will eventually be the winner.
Adding regulatory control to software is a good idea in theory, but is ultimately impractical. First, it is usually non-obvious what the software is supposed to do. Unlike a bridge, who everyone agrees has the job of carrying vehicles over a divide while not falling down.
Many exploits found in MS products were actually features of the software in a different context. It would be very easy to argue, as Microsoft has many times in the past, that an exploit was not really a standards failure, because the software is doing what it is designed to do, and the exploit is only a side effect. Even in custom software development, where a contract is drawn up, it is rare to have a specification detailed enough to accurately say that the standard has not been met.
If the market can get 'smarter' at choosing software, there will be no need for regulation. And that begins with education. Business cases need to be put forward for quality software. Some work has begun on this with TCO studies. However, these studies are often rough estimates rather than actual case studies of side-by-side companies competing in the same industry, one using quality software, and the other using cheap software. What would be the advantage in the short term, the medium term and the longer term? Putting together these types of documents and createing a way to disseminate this information to the software buying corporate market should be the goal of the whole software industry.
Sun Microsystems has taken every step possible to prevent Microsoft from shipping our award winning Java virtual machine. In fact, Sun resorted to litigation to stop Microsoft from shipping a high performance Java virtual machine that took optimal advantage of Windows.
This is a case of Microsoft spin doctors turning what is a flagrant breach of contract into a 'potayto / potahto' debate. The MS JVM took 'optimal advantage' of Windows. In other words, it broke Java on every other platform. But I sure the MS whores on Slashdot are going to whine 'So what, Windows rules, therefore everything else sux', or something intelligent like that.
Heres another good one. At Microsoft we are proud of the Java virtual machine we created, and the value our customers see in it. It has a long history of high quality and superior performance. It is also the only Java virtual machine that offers an integrated applet browsing experience with Internet Explorer So a criminal monopolist makes a proprietary browser, that takes the market through illegal monopolistic power, and then said criminal monopolist then boasts that only a JVM with extensions that breach contract with Sun, will run on it's proprietary browser. Well shit, I guess it makes sense if you are some moronic loser PC owner who doesn't know the first thing about software, but to anyone with a tad of common sense, it's BULLSHIT.
The people here bashing Sun for actually pursuing some kind of justice against a criminal organisation should first think what thier defense of MS implies... "I support a criminal organisation in their criminal activities therefore, by association, I am a __________"
Not have anything like DMCA or WIPO treaty (sorry, USA) Strong crypto is legal (sorry, France) Not have pro-censorship laws (sorry, Germany, Australia, USA) Not have weird libel laws (sorry, UK) Searches and siezures only done with a warrant (sorry, USA) Not take Scientologists and their kind seriously (sorry, USA)
Sound like either Canada (although risky because of possible US govt. extortion) or Hong Kong. I would recommend Hong Kong for the following reasons. 1) You can set up a LLC in Hong Kong without being a resident. The company pays either 0% or 17% tax on profit greater than ~$1000 pcm 2) You will of course be required to pay federal taxes to your government if money moves from your HK account to your local account. There are ways to minimize this, which will take a minimum of research. 3) HK has a political policy of 'Laise Faire' economics, and as long as you are being a good citizen by making money, it's generally 'hands off' 4) HK has weak copyright laws. They are in the process of changing, but there is HUGE resistance from the citizenry. Still it would be worth investigating. 5) HK has excellent access to Asia Pacific backbones, high uptime reliability. 6) On the downside, it's about 3-5 times the price of hosting in the US or Canada. 7) Libel laws are pretty much as the Brits left them in the basic law. 8) HK has a reasonably good justice system, with plain english common law, torts, etc etc 9) Hong Kong politicians (and especially Chinese politburo) will not do the automatic 'bend and take it' from the US like for example Australia, whose poor PM has taken it so many times it cured his constipation. This may be good as a 'fallback position' to use juristriction as a defense.
I have already researched this, and have come to the conclusion that you would need to be doing minimum US$50K worth of business a year to justify the additional costs. After 50K a whole bunch of tax and accounting benefits kick in that make the extra time and expense well worthwhile.
I disagree with you only in principle. In principal, it is not legal to control distribution of material if you are the only source of production. In reality however, the Anti-Trust laws in the US, and the Trade Practices Act of Australia are absolutely no protection against the monopolies that exists in every major industry. It is because the government uses control of distribution to censor materials that it allows publishers the illegal practice of distribution control. However, that still has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright only grants COPY RIGHTS, ie the right to copy. It says nothing about how, where or when those copies may be distributed. The fact that distribution IS controlled is a failure of corrupt, democratically not elected governments like yours and mine.
The free market has never been given a chance at all. In every situation where America has allowed the free market to operate un-regulated, it HAS worked. In every situation where government has attempted to regulate, you only see big business running amuck.
It's quite amazing to see domesticated city people going on about the 'free market'. Go into a tropical jungle a thousand miles from the nearest town, and there you will see the 'free market'. A perfectly self-regulating system that follows a very simple rule. The strong kill, and the weak die.
But what I think you meant by the 'free market', is a situation where people are able to exchange goods at a rate agreed by both parties.
The only problem with that scenario is that it can be subverted by someone who is unproductive (ie. cannot make goods to trade), but capable of extreme violence. This person can negotiate unfavourable terms, that is, give me some bananas or I'll beat your skull in.
This is why 'governments' were originally formed, in order to protect the 'market' from being subverted by violence. Unfortunately, in order to do this, the government needs to be capable of greater violence/force than those it is protecting the market from. This leads to the unfortunate problem that the market can be subverted by the government whose job it is to protect it.
This is THE fundamental, and basically unresolvable problem of human governance and society.
Throwing around terms like 'capitalism', 'socialism', 'communism' and 'free market', is at best sophisticated wanking, and at worst, basic stupidity.
The problems of Government in all countries, at all times will be solved the way it has always been solved. By the shifting attitudes of the people who live there, from extreme facist conservatism to laizee faire libertarian, and the events that have throughout history ALWAYS accompanied such shifts.
What Copyright is is the right to absolutely control the distribution of the copyrighted work.
Er..no. Copyright is the right to absolutely control re-production of the copyrighted work. Controlling the distribution would be a restriction of trade.
Re:This still won't work!
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They routinely execute Christians and Falun Gong members merely for having their religion behind closed doors. Yes, I think that they would happily murder thousands of people for circumventing their firewall and breaking their moral codes of conduct.
Wow! Someone hit the bong early this morning. I can just see the routine now. 8:00AM Early morning kung-fu practice 9:00AM Execute one Christian and one FalunGong member 9:30AM Breakfast
Look, the most common thing that the Chinese government does with dissenters is put them into a mental hospital, or harass them by arresting them three times a week. Occaisonally, they give one a beating. When the inmates go on a hunger strike, they force a drip into their arms. But to come out with the hysterical statement that christians and flg practitioners are routinely executed...sheesh... By the way, people are routinely executed in the US too. Unfortunately, their crime is something they don't have a choice about. They're black.
You really don't have a clue, do you? Just because western governments aren't perfect, not by a long shot, and just because western history is as soaked in blood as the rest of the world's history does not mean you can equate the practices of an actively repressing regime such as the PRC with the fuck ups of western government, which, under most circumstances anyway, and for their own citizens, upholds the basic tenets of freedom and human rights in general. I happen to think this is good, as I value the freedoms and rights of the individual above those of the collective. You may disagree. Fine. Just don't go attempting to prove the PRC isn't significantly more repressive than western governments, because it is.
One of the most amazing things about 'western governments' is that about 100 years ago they figured out that most peoples behaviour is not determined by guns or force or laws, but by what they know, what they think and what they believe. And so began the largest and most effective brain-washing campaign in human history.
The difference between Communist regimes like China and Western regimes like America, is that the American regime became much more effective and effecient at brain-washing than their communist counterparts, thanks largely to two factors.
The first was an incredible amount of research in American universities into psychology, psychometry, hypnosis and brain function. In fact, you could say that psycho-neurological research is the 'silent-revolution', because the advance in knowledge has been so spectacular, yet the widespread disemination of this knowledge has been so small.
The second factor in America's advancement of brain-washing and mind-control was the the advertising industry. Unlike the dim-witted, donut-eating, TV watching public, people in the advertising industry were paying close attention to the advances in psycho-neurology, and experimenting with them. The massive advantage of this type of experimentation was that there was a powerful feedback loop between the experiments (advertisements) and effects (sales or responses). This feedback loop allowed the rapid development of numerous powerfull methods to influence people's beliefs and behaviours.
The success of these methods led to their adoption by the media organisations who displayed the advertisements, and eventually by sophisticated 'spin doctors' within the ranks of the Republican and Democratic political parties. So powerfull were these methods and so widespread was their use, that to many people who live outside the United States of America, when they meet Americans, it seems as though they live in a delusory dream world.
I am not a resident of the United States, nor am I resident of China. However, I have travelled in both countries, and have met and spoken with many people in both countries, and the conclusion I have come to is this.
Despite strict government control of media, the average city-dweller in China knows more about what is going on in the outside world (ie. outside their own country/province) than the average American.
The average Chinese is more critical, and more openly critical of the government than the average American is, in private conversation.
Information and opinion in broadcast media such as radio, film and television is just as restricted, and contains just as much government propaganda in the United States as it does in China.The one exception to that is newsprint, which in the US is much more dissenting and critical than China. I put this down to the growing illiteracy rate in the US, and the low penetration of print-media vs broadcast media.
Tiananmen was the last of a series of ugly incidents that began in the cultural revolution, and is highly unlikely to happen again. Of course, students have been shot when protesting in the US, but they were probably "hippie communists", so that makes it acceptable to Americans.
And finally, the WACO incident, you claim Waco Texas was *an incident* were the US government dealt rather clumsily, with *very unfortunate consequences*, with a group of people who were *actively* opposing the government and public safety in general. without showing any references to back up your claim that the branch Davidians were *actively* opposing the government and public safety in general thus providing the perfect example of how incredibly effective the brain-washing mind-control techniques are, given that you lived half your life in Indonesia.
If you were to read the statements by the Sherrif's department during the investigatory hearings, you would get a completely different picture. A picture that shows that the ATF acted inappropriately, and almost certainly illegally, against the reccommedation of the Sheriff's department.
There is a lot more to this story than meets the eye on both sides, however the tendency for Americans brought up in the 'sound bite era' is to have too short an attention span to research anything beyond the bullshit they are fed by the TV.
I would say that Darwinism itself is Racism's best friend. I submit the following exhibits for your cerebral consumption.
From The History of Creation: Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes by Ernst Haeckel, 1876.
etc
etc
Wow! That is an incredible post, I nearly missed it because my threshold is set at 3. I would mod you up, but no mod privelages.
I personally believe that evolution presents us with prima facia evidence of what has happened already, but beyond that, speculation on what will happen next is a near infinite calculation.
The idea that human evolution has stopped can only be proved in hindsight, and even then long after myself and Prof Jones have re-entered the Heisenberg lottery (ie. our elements have been scattered to the four winds).
And so to put forward a theory that can neither be proved or dis-proved in one lifetime, and then make a link between inter-racial breeding and the cesation of biological evolution, is either an act of monumental stupidity, or there is a hidden agenda.
Just what that agenda is should be brought out into the light, so to limit the memetic damage such an act can wreak.
Change of environment because of climactic change is very important in evolution, but not necesarily more important than other things. For example, change of environment because of migration. Of course an ice age will have a huge impact on natural selection. It's just annoying that the punctuated evolutionists suggest that this sort of event is required for complex evolutionary change.
While I don't entirely subscribe to the 'punctuated evolution' theory, I must say that 'punctations' leave a much more visible trail then gradual evolutions. It's much easier to find evidence of evolution that occurred suddenly than it is to find the enourmous amount of evidence required to say with any degree of accuracy 'ok, over 2800 years, this species changed from having X to having Y'.
And, I don't know if an immune system with widespread diversity would be an order of magnitude better at anything. It would be more likely to protect against a wider group of diseases, but it might not be as good at protecting against a disease that requires intense specialization. No way to know, and no way to guess who would be more fit.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. I would call a disease that requires intense specialization an "event", because it's effects on survival and re-productive rate would be measurable over a very short time period, say 10-50 years. Say something like the black-death.
On the other hand, an immune system with strong resistance to a diverse range of common, existing diseases would give the organism a greater survival, reproductive, and more importantly for humans, prosperity rate over an extended period. That is, the lifetime of the organism, and it's offspring.
Then, over 3-10 generations of greater survival, reproduction and prosperity, the effects of this advantage would become visibly obvious.
Yet another example of someone on/. shouting down the efforts of someone they disagree with with an infantile remark.
Agreed. I should have calmed down before I posted.
Perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's wrong. Scientists aren't always as arrogant as you seem to be - they don't claim to have all the answers but they damn well try to look for some.
I agree. I didn't get that from the article though. The idea seemed so half-baked that it was inconceivable that it had come from a scientist.
Perhaps you'd be more confortable if scientist's didn't theorise?
Absolutely not. However, I would prefer that they have something at least plausible before they publish.
If Newton hadn't thought about gravity, Darwin about evolution or Einstein about the speed of light?
Well, Newton completed his calculations and his equations before he published. Darwin from what I can tell, was a little bit of a plagiarist, and I think he published too early. Still, he copped a lot more grief for the theory of evolution than Prof Jones got from my flame.
And Einstein also completed his equations before he published.
I'm not sure if your comparison has any merit.
Prof. Jones might be wrong. He might be right. Or, he might be somewhere in between. But if we take your approach to science we'll never find out.
Wrong assumption and wrong conclusion. It is EXACTLY by critisizing a theory that we have been able to move forward in science. By responding to critisism a theory either strengthens or dies. Just to take someone's qualifications and blindly accept that every thing they say is automatically true is the worst thing that ever happened to science.
If Prof Jones is correct, then his ideas will survive critisism, ridicule, insults, scepticism and whatever else is thrown at it. If not, they will go down in flames like every other dumb idea thrown out to the public.
This is true science. Ideas, principles and theories that survive not because of who said them, but because their basic truth has survived all attempts to destroy them.
No, thirdrock was doing pretty well. Why thank-you.
ME:The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth. Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains. This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
YOU:Err, dunno about thirdrock's point here. Virii evolve a little too fast for human evolution to keep up with. That's why mammals evolved the technique of transmitting antibodies via breastmilk.
My point was that now that we have mostly eliminated threats like wild animals and mosquitoes, the highest threat to our survival are these quickly mutating diseases. In this circumstance, the "fittest" attribute for the current environment is an immune system that is an order of magnitude "better" at resisting common communicable diseases, which as you correctly point out, mutate much faster than we do.
And "evolutionary event" is a silly idea.
Even dramatic climatic change? I remember hearing a theory about how the last ice-age began, something to do with billions of gallons of fresh water being dumped into the sea near antarctica, which caused a drop in salination which stopped the gulf stream from flowing which cooled the world down in a very short period of time, about 100 years. Which in a geological time-scale, is definitely an "event".
If the frequency of a gene is changing in population, then evolution is happening. You don't need an event. This is true. I guess what I meant by an "event" is when the frequency changes exponentially rather than linearly.
Slashdot Mirror
1. 1875+95=1970. Still have 20 years' difference; perhaps this is why proposed extensions have only been for 20 years at a time?
Right, but if you extend copyright from 1970 by 20 years, you get 1990, which puts the 1989 release date within the copyright period. I think the original poster's point was that the law allows retrospective extensions.
2. If the terms were to somehow overlap, the process thirdrock describes is a good one. However, you should sue Disney for the amount of revenue, not profit. Stan Lee [slashdot.org] can tell you that even wildly successful movies make no money.
I'm sure the Disney Corp made a profit on The Little Mermaid. It might be harder to make a case for the revenue than the profit, but this would probably lead to 'creative accounting' that minimises the profit made (like that poor guy who wrote Jerry Maguire(?) and the studio fudged the figures so he wouldn't get a royalty payment).
Someone mod the parent up and answer the question if you can
:)
Afterall copyright extensions are retroactive for all, right? Maybe that's the path Lessig should take
Agreed. Agreed. It would require something like the following process.
1. To find someone who was a named beneficiary of the estate when Anderson died.
2. Establish a fighting fund where contributions can be made via the web. Then get the word out to slashdot/civil rights crowd.
3. Apply for copyright extension on The Little Mermaid.
4. If granted, sue Disney for copyright infringement, ask for an amount equivelent to Disney's profit on the Movie.
5. Add profits from suit to fighting fund. Repeat steps 1-5 until Disney and other greedy corporations seek to have the law changed.
6. Use the change in the law as 'thin edge of the wedge' for copyright reform.
Bad laws are the worst form of Tyranny
- Edmund Burke 1729-1797
WOOOOO HOOOOO!
...
That has to be the best post I have seen on Slashdot for six months.
HELLO ILLITERATE AMERICANS, "lose" is to misplace or be berefit of an item and "loose" is the opposite of "tight".
People don't "loose" their jobs, "loose" their lawsuits or anything else, THEY LOSE THEM.
And this
It is bad enough everyone in Mexico is stealing our work, now India.
In the six years after NAFTA was implemented, 400,000 unskilled labour jobs went over the border to Mexico, but the additional trade generated over 1,000,000 jobs that were mostly "white collar". What that meant was, if you could get away from the TV for a couple hours a week, you could re-skill, and get a job in the new job sector at twice the pay rate as your previous labour intensive back-breaking health destroying job.
But that would have required EFFORT, something Americans no longer seem to think applies to them.
This post is hilarious, lets take it one by one.
I also wonder if about 10 or 15 guys with just flame-throwers could take down a steel structure from the bottom.
Err, no. Not even burning 10 tonnes of jet fuel would accomplish that aim. Perhaps you should investigate the melting temperature of steel and the combustion temperature of fuel.
The south tower went down first because the plan hit further down and their was more pressure on the steel rods.
Riiiiight.
15 or 20 guys with flame throwers could go into the garage or basement of a big building and just heat up the support rods. Under the enormous pressure, it would not take long for them to buckle
Yeah, I'm sure building security wouldn't notice 15 or 20 guys carrying flame throwers into the garage.
Or at least place dynamite on each one.
Sure, just pull it out of your pocket, stick it to the support with gaffer tape, light the fuse and run. That would work.
I fear the sears tower. I just have a funny feeling about it.
You should see someone about your irrational fear of the sears tower.
Someone may bring in, god knows what in our harbars.
Yes, it might be something incredible, like information on the world outside the US, or drinkable coffee or edible food.
Some terrorist buying lots of suitcase sized nuclear weapons in the blackmarket in russia. Bin Laden claimed to have bought several of them for several million each.
Did he tell you that himself, or was you hearin that on the Tee Vee?
Leaked classifieds mentioned that insiders from AL-Qaeda talked about destroying America in 3 waves.
Were those New York Times or USA Today classifieds?
Wanted
Angry young men for new organisation currently in the planning stage for second wave of operations. No experience necessary. Must have life insurance.
Call 555-7856 and ask for Osama.
Bin Laden likes to do one act more destructive then the other.
What do you base this statement on? Leaked classifieds? Did CNN tell you? Or did you come to this unverifyable, idiotic conclusion on your own?
My guess is next he will take out more buildings.
Yeah, and maybe next time he will strike buildings that are strategically important, like the stock exchange, rather than buildings with a brand spanking new insurance policy and a 100 million dollar tax lien.
Hardly unique to the ancient Egyptians. Beer (and wine) have been used throughout Europe, North African and West Asia for this purpose. So much so that whilst Europeans evolved the ability to detoxify alcohol people from parts of the world such as China often cannot tolerate alcohol at all. Because the ancient Chinese made water safe to drink by making tea.
Errp! Wrong, but thank-you for playing. The Chinese developed beer, wine and distilled spirits about 1000 years before Europeans. However, after Kung Fu Tsu (Confucius), it wasn't considered 'proper' in polite society to drink alcohol. After the end of the Tang dynasty, alchohol consumption decreased to almost nothing when the Europeans arrived. It was still used in both cooking and the extraction of active ingredients from medicinal herbs. In fact, the Chinese character for medicine contains the character 'jiu' which means wine/alcohol/distilled spirits.
Strange, I don't remember anything interesting happening on the ninth of November.
Actually, it was the 13th of November that the Indian Parliment was shot up by rebel gunmen.
Yeah, I'm fully aware of "roaming" being a purely administrative issue. (If one company owned all the towers, it wouldn't make much sense that they'd care which tower your call happened to be carried on.)
Which is the case in Japan, Australia, and Canada I think.
My point, though, is that with a large enough country, you'll most likely have several competing providers - and thereby such hassles as roaming charges. Cell towers aren't exactly cheap to install and maintain. When you cover a large number of square miles, it starts to cost much more to send your installation and repair techs out to all of those remote locations.
That's true enough. In Australia the main Telco was until recently government-owned, so they just put up a tower at each of the main exchanges.
We also have a much smaller population distribution than the US. Almost 50% of our land is uninhabited.
Japan may have much more population density, but at least they don't have some company trying to maintain a group of cell towers over 1,500 miles away.
Well, they do actually. Japan is about 1500 miles end to end, just not side to side. In total area it is about the same size as California , and it has better coverage than California.
In the U.S. - ISDN has generally been a rip-off. $149 a month or so for 128K of bandwidth was the norm here in the Midwest. Our telcos didn't want to offer it until the federal trade commission ruled that they had to offer it everywhere by a certain date. It required a number of phone switch upgrades, so they wanted all the ISDN users to pay for those upgrade costs.
We also had the same problem with ISDN, because of analog exchanges. Now ISDN is cheap, and nobody wants it because of co-ax and ADSL. This was more a matter of government policy though.
There was this huge gomi pile of abandoned electronics that were almost brand new but no longer wanted; because there was a new model that just came out that had more gee wiz features.
No, it's because in Japan the manufacturers have made it so expensive to have an item out of warranty repaired that you might as well buy a new one.
Eeep! Wrong, but thank you for playing.
When I lived in Japan, the Gomi we got was in perfect working order, it just wasn't the latest model with the latest features. Given that the Japanese don't have 3000 sqft of empty space to fill up with junk like Americans seem to, and add to that Japanese people don't generally buy second-hand goods, out into the trash it went.
Well, you also have to keep in mind, it's *far* easiesr providing seamless coverage to the relatively small geography of the Japanese islands than to the entire United States.
Ha ha. This one should have been modded up as funny. We have (almost) seamless coverage in Australia, and we are the same landmass size as the US (if you exclude Alaska) with 1/10th of the population.
Plus, Canada is the same size as the US, and as far as I can tell, they have better cell-phone coverage than you do.
If Japan was the same size as the U.S., I suspect you'd see them dealing with issues like "roaming" too.
Roaming has got nothing to do with distance, it's about going across service providers. If you have one big cell phone company with lots of towers connected by fibre optics then there is no "roaming", just switching. "Roaming" is when your call is routed through a tower that doesn't belong to your provider. And most of the problems with that are admisistrative, not technological.
I agree, though, that they probably have an advantage by standardizing on one cellular technology. It always seemed odd to me that we have carriers (such as VoiceStream wireless) in the U.S. supporting GSM phone standards, while everyone else does CDMA.
It's especially odd as CDMA was developed in the US.
Finally, back on the topic of the thread, China's communal culture is more amenable to Free Software in many ways than it is to a foreign monopoly like Microsoft (remember, the British ruled China with an iron fist through trade monopolies, so this is more offensive to them than to us, which is saying a lot because monopolies are, or should be, very offensive to anyone who values a free market).
... its economy is as capitalist as any western economy (which isn't saying a lot if you look at any western economy closely ... think corporate welfare, which is rampent, protectionist tarrifs, legislated monopolies, and so forth, all of which undermine or even eliminate free markets).
Not true, in every way.
1. The British NEVER, I repeat NEVER ruled China. Yes, they forced the concession of Hong Kong and the New Territories, and yes, the forced the concession of trading 'quarters' in ShangHai that were under British law. But Britain was never the ruling government of China.
2. The concessions mentioned above were not brought about through a trade monopoly by the British, quite the contrary. It was China that had the trade monopoly in Tea. It was China that dictated trade terms through their monopoly. That is, they would only trade Tea for Silver. The British were fighting a currency war in Europe, trying to make silver the monetary unit of choice, because Spain, France and Holland had so much gold. That is why the Opium trade began. To return silver to British coffers.
3. Britain did not have a trade monopoly in Opium. Opium was sold to China by the French, and the Americans as well.
And, last but not least, China is really only communist in name
Not quite, but certainly moving in that direction. There are still a large number of State Enterprises that are protected more than their counterparts would be in most 'capitalist' countries. But given the recent steel and agriculture subsidies granted by the Shrub Administration, I would say that China's economy is almost as capitalist as the US economy, but falls a LONG way behind Hong Kong.
Phew! This post has so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with this...
If Microsoft is the most incompetent company in IT, then how come they have 40 billion USD in the bank, and by market cap is still the largest company in the world?
One has nothing to do with the other. Competence in IT means the ability to build good products (in this case, software). Competence in cash flow and market cap means the ability to SELL products. You don't have to look very far back in free-market-capitalism to see that when a new technology is introduced to the market, as long as there is any advantage to be had, people will buy anything. For example, take cars, in the early years of the car industry, cars sucked. Noisy, smelly, ineffecient, ineffective and just plain dangerous. As the percentage of the population who owned cars reached saturation point, the market 'wised up', and started shopping for qualities such as safety (because there was a 1 in 4 chance of dying in a car crash), economy (because Iran had the nerve to think it could charge whatever it wanted for oil), and handling/compactness (because it started getting hard to park in the cities).
Microsoft are like those early car companies and those early railroaders. They caught the wave, using software that they either bought (CP/M - Seatle Computer Company), copied (Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Windows, 4th Dimension, Navigator) or boldly stole (Stac Electronics). This makes them a very competent marketing company, but not a very competent IT company.
As for XBox etc. Microsoft has had tons of mediocre performing products and services, and has sunk hundreds of millions into failed ventures before, including a series of dot-coms. Some of them were quite high profile failures. X-Box won't be the first, and unlikely the last.
If you are referring to the WebMD/Healtheon play, then that was simply a monopoly/internet strategy defense. They were planning to move into that market themselves, but were not ready to do so. So it actually was a success.
Microsoft doesn't set standards by press release.
Not quite true. Ever heard of FUD?
Microsoft sets standards by buying out key players, by leveraging their monopoly situation (hence the findings of facts in the anti-trust trial, showing that they did break the law), by sinking millions or billions into marketing and sales of products that will never turn a profit (Internet Explorer, anyone?), or that will only turn a profit after years of losses.
Microsoft does not and will not ever sell Internet Explorer. To do so would be idiotic. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's Trojan Horse into the web-services, online vertical markets. Once they are firmly established in those markets, they will even give away Windows OS for free. Windows OS will become Internet Explorer's filing clerk. IE will have all sorts of technology built into it that will 'enhance the user's browsing experience'. What that means in non-marketroid language is that to pay your bills, have food delivered, do your banking, and manage your companies accounts, you will need to have Internet Explorer, because all of the Big Internet Service Companies (tm) will offer very convenient services that will only be available if you have the latest Internet Explorer technology. And to build those special services, you will need to pay Microsoft a service fee. Perhaps per transaction, or month.
As much as I despise Microsoft, I think you're naive if you think Microsoft is incompetent, and I think you're naive if you think Microsoft will fail. They may end up losing their hegemony on OS front some day, but the OS is only a small share of their profits, and a decreasing one at that.
As I said above, they will soon give the OS away for free. They are moving their whole business away from shrinkwrap software. Which is great! Their software sucked anyway.
I don't think Microsoft particularly worry if they EVER make a profit on XBox. Regardless of whether they make a profit, it will strengthen their brand as a viable source of electronics devices or appliances, and may allow them easier entries into other, related markets - this is the kind of integration of products and marketing that Microsoft is best at (and much better at than they are at technical innovation).
I disagree. I believe Microsoft are positioning themselves to take the online gaming market. First they get lots of X-Boxes out there. That creates a platform. Once there is a platform to sell to, game developers build games for it. It is actually easier to sell games on the platform with the least games available, as long as it's a good game.
Right, so you've got the platform. Next, you set yourself up as the multiplayer online game provider of choice for the X-Box platform. You do this by creating a game-server first then hit the market hard with a huge piece of iron in every major city in every timezone in the world, plus lots of hype and FUD.
OK, so now you have millions of gamers coming online 24/7/365. Do the math. That's 61320 billable hours per year. Let's assume that Microsoft charge you 3 cents per game, and the average game lasts half an hour. That 6 cents per hour. Here is that translated into dollars per annum, given X number of gamers using the system at any one time.
2 gamers $7358.40
1,000 gamers $3,679,200
1,000,000 gamers $3,679,200,000
Not a bad little earner. And once you have totally taken that market, you can start earning a profit on the box again.
Even so, I doubt XBox will flop if Microsoft really care about it. Microsoft make enough money to give the damn thing away for free, and still stay in the black. They can easily destroy the console market and crush both Sony and Nintendo in a price war if they see the game console market as important enough to justify it - 40 billion USD could cover quite an amount of free XBox units.
While this is true, it won't happen. The lowest they would sell the box at is cost. They cannot go below break-even. Why? Because it is vitally important for Microsoft to keep their stock price going up. Their recent tiff with the SEC shows how paranoid they were about earnings reports. They do this for three reasons.
1. Programming talent is held in the belly of the beast by the hypnotic trance of getting rich through stock options. If this goes, then the best programmers will leave to do something interesting with their career, as opposed to bloating bloatware even more.
2. Microsoft buys their own stock. Part of MS profitability is the healthy balance sheet shown share price valuations that Microsoft corporation owns.
3. Microsoft don't pay dividends. People who buy MS stock, do so for capital gains, not dividend returns. If there were no capital gains, and no dividends, shareholders would start a selling frenzy.
a) they know the market, and b) they have weakened their opponents more by fear, uncertainty and doubt (by the very threat of a massive Microsoft war campain against their competitors).
Yeah, I'm sure Sony are quaking in their boots.
Perhaps someone should write something that translates MS-HTML into real HTML on-the-fly so that it can be read and displayed accurately in Mozilla.
...
... the translation programme doesn't need to go into the browser, it could be built into the proxy server. If you could build translation intelligence into the proxy server, let's call it RH-Proxy (for Real HTML Proxy), then once you get RH-Proxy installed on the biggest ISP's, like AOL, then the problem is solved. AOL can then switch to Mozilla browsing technology without breaking any websites for their customers.
:)
That's a brilliant idea !! Just one problem though, which you cover here
I know that isn't what the Mozilla people want, because it doesn't promote standards, but I think we need to fight MS on their own terms
And the solution to this is
The only thing though is that this would start a feature war between M$ and the people who make RH-Proxy. If you can get enough Open Source coders working on RH-Proxy, then the resources that M$ spends on adding new non-standards-compliant features to a product they give away will cause a severe economic drain on the companies profitability, until it becomes untenable, business wise, to continue.
I might head over to sourceforge now to start up a project
The unfortunate thing about this is that it is really a market failure that has produced this situation. You have on the one hand expensive software that places your company's IP, and profitability at high risk, and on the other hand, free software that contains significantly less risk. What's wrong with this picture? Market failure. In this case a lack of good information, and lots of very good (bad) marketing.
How the clueless economics graduates will reconcile this with their idea that the free market is 'perfect', I dont know, but the market can correct this situation the same way it has produced it. How? By making better informed purchasing decisions when it comes to software.
Surely if the market can 'wise up', then the better, more robust, more secure software will afford companies who rely on computing technology an advantage over their competitors.
This will improve the quality of software from ALL vendors, including Microsoft. After all, Microsoft was only selling what the market would bear. If the market has a lower tolerance of poor quality software, then the better quality software will eventually be the winner.
Adding regulatory control to software is a good idea in theory, but is ultimately impractical. First, it is usually non-obvious what the software is supposed to do. Unlike a bridge, who everyone agrees has the job of carrying vehicles over a divide while not falling down.
Many exploits found in MS products were actually features of the software in a different context. It would be very easy to argue, as Microsoft has many times in the past, that an exploit was not really a standards failure, because the software is doing what it is designed to do, and the exploit is only a side effect. Even in custom software development, where a contract is drawn up, it is rare to have a specification detailed enough to accurately say that the standard has not been met.
If the market can get 'smarter' at choosing software, there will be no need for regulation. And that begins with education. Business cases need to be put forward for quality software. Some work has begun on this with TCO studies. However, these studies are often rough estimates rather than actual case studies of side-by-side companies competing in the same industry, one using quality software, and the other using cheap software. What would be the advantage in the short term, the medium term and the longer term? Putting together these types of documents and createing a way to disseminate this information to the software buying corporate market should be the goal of the whole software industry.
Sun Microsystems has taken every step possible to prevent Microsoft from shipping our award winning Java virtual machine. In fact, Sun resorted to litigation to stop Microsoft from shipping a high performance Java virtual machine that took optimal advantage of Windows.
... "I support a criminal organisation in their criminal activities therefore, by association, I am a __________"
This is a case of Microsoft spin doctors turning what is a flagrant breach of contract into a 'potayto / potahto' debate.
The MS JVM took 'optimal advantage' of Windows. In other words, it broke Java on every other platform.
But I sure the MS whores on Slashdot are going to whine 'So what, Windows rules, therefore everything else sux', or something intelligent like that.
Heres another good one.
At Microsoft we are proud of the Java virtual machine we created, and the value our customers see in it. It has a long history of high quality and superior performance. It is also the only Java virtual machine that offers an integrated applet browsing experience with Internet Explorer
So a criminal monopolist makes a proprietary browser, that takes the market through illegal monopolistic power, and then said criminal monopolist then boasts that only a JVM with extensions that breach contract with Sun, will run on it's proprietary browser.
Well shit, I guess it makes sense if you are some moronic loser PC owner who doesn't know the first thing about software, but to anyone with a tad of common sense, it's BULLSHIT.
The people here bashing Sun for actually pursuing some kind of justice against a criminal organisation should first think what thier defense of MS implies
Fill in the blank MS apologist assholes.
Not have anything like DMCA or WIPO treaty (sorry, USA)
Strong crypto is legal (sorry, France)
Not have pro-censorship laws (sorry, Germany, Australia, USA)
Not have weird libel laws (sorry, UK)
Searches and siezures only done with a warrant (sorry, USA)
Not take Scientologists and their kind seriously (sorry, USA)
Sound like either Canada (although risky because of possible US govt. extortion) or Hong Kong.
I would recommend Hong Kong for the following reasons.
1) You can set up a LLC in Hong Kong without being a resident. The company pays either 0% or 17% tax on profit greater than ~$1000 pcm
2) You will of course be required to pay federal taxes to your government if money moves from your HK account to your local account. There are ways to minimize this, which will take a minimum of research.
3) HK has a political policy of 'Laise Faire' economics, and as long as you are being a good citizen by making money, it's generally 'hands off'
4) HK has weak copyright laws. They are in the process of changing, but there is HUGE resistance from the citizenry. Still it would be worth investigating.
5) HK has excellent access to Asia Pacific backbones, high uptime reliability.
6) On the downside, it's about 3-5 times the price of hosting in the US or Canada.
7) Libel laws are pretty much as the Brits left them in the basic law.
8) HK has a reasonably good justice system, with plain english common law, torts, etc etc
9) Hong Kong politicians (and especially Chinese politburo) will not do the automatic 'bend and take it' from the US like for example Australia, whose poor PM has taken it so many times it cured his constipation. This may be good as a 'fallback position' to use juristriction as a defense.
I have already researched this, and have come to the conclusion that you would need to be doing minimum US$50K worth of business a year to justify the additional costs. After 50K a whole bunch of tax and accounting benefits kick in that make the extra time and expense well worthwhile.
I disagree with you only in principle. In principal, it is not legal to control distribution of material if you are the only source of production.
In reality however, the Anti-Trust laws in the US, and the Trade Practices Act of Australia are absolutely no protection against the monopolies that exists in every major industry.
It is because the government uses control of distribution to censor materials that it allows publishers the illegal practice of distribution control.
However, that still has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright only grants COPY RIGHTS, ie the right to copy. It says nothing about how, where or when those copies may be distributed. The fact that distribution IS controlled is a failure of corrupt, democratically not elected governments like yours and mine.
The free market has never been given a chance at all. In every situation where America has allowed the free market to operate un-regulated, it HAS worked. In every situation where government has attempted to regulate, you only see big business running amuck.
It's quite amazing to see domesticated city people going on about the 'free market'.
Go into a tropical jungle a thousand miles from the nearest town, and there you will see the 'free market'. A perfectly self-regulating system that follows a very simple rule. The strong kill, and the weak die.
But what I think you meant by the 'free market', is a situation where people are able to exchange goods at a rate agreed by both parties.
The only problem with that scenario is that it can be subverted by someone who is unproductive (ie. cannot make goods to trade), but capable of extreme violence. This person can negotiate unfavourable terms, that is, give me some bananas or I'll beat your skull in.
This is why 'governments' were originally formed, in order to protect the 'market' from being subverted by violence. Unfortunately, in order to do this, the government needs to be capable of greater violence/force than those it is protecting the market from. This leads to the unfortunate problem that the market can be subverted by the government whose job it is to protect it.
This is THE fundamental, and basically unresolvable problem of human governance and society.
Throwing around terms like 'capitalism', 'socialism', 'communism' and 'free market', is at best sophisticated wanking, and at worst, basic stupidity.
The problems of Government in all countries, at all times will be solved the way it has always been solved. By the shifting attitudes of the people who live there, from extreme facist conservatism to laizee faire libertarian, and the events that have throughout history ALWAYS accompanied such shifts.
What Copyright is is the right to absolutely control the distribution of the copyrighted work.
Er..no. Copyright is the right to absolutely control re-production of the copyrighted work. Controlling the distribution would be a restriction of trade.
They routinely execute Christians and Falun Gong members merely for having their religion behind closed doors. Yes, I think that they would happily murder thousands of people for circumventing their firewall and breaking their moral codes of conduct.
Wow! Someone hit the bong early this morning. I can just see the routine now.
8:00AM Early morning kung-fu practice
9:00AM Execute one Christian and one FalunGong member
9:30AM Breakfast
Look, the most common thing that the Chinese government does with dissenters is put them into a mental hospital, or harass them by arresting them three times a week.
Occaisonally, they give one a beating. When the inmates go on a hunger strike, they force a drip into their arms.
But to come out with the hysterical statement that christians and flg practitioners are routinely executed...sheesh...
By the way, people are routinely executed in the US too. Unfortunately, their crime is something they don't have a choice about. They're black.
You really don't have a clue, do you? Just because western governments aren't perfect, not by a long shot, and just because western history is as soaked in blood as the rest of the world's history does not mean you can equate the practices of an actively repressing regime such as the PRC with the fuck ups of western government, which, under most circumstances anyway, and for their own citizens, upholds the basic tenets of freedom and human rights in general. I happen to think this is good, as I value the freedoms and rights of the individual above those of the collective. You may disagree. Fine. Just don't go attempting to prove the PRC isn't significantly more repressive than western governments, because it is.
One of the most amazing things about 'western governments' is that about 100 years ago they figured out that most peoples behaviour is not determined by guns or force or laws, but by what they know, what they think and what they believe.
And so began the largest and most effective brain-washing campaign in human history.
The difference between Communist regimes like China and Western regimes like America, is that the American regime became much more effective and effecient at brain-washing than their communist counterparts, thanks largely to two factors.
The first was an incredible amount of research in American universities into psychology, psychometry, hypnosis and brain function. In fact, you could say that psycho-neurological research is the 'silent-revolution', because the advance in knowledge has been so spectacular, yet the widespread disemination of this knowledge has been so small.
The second factor in America's advancement of brain-washing and mind-control was the the advertising industry. Unlike the dim-witted, donut-eating, TV watching public, people in the advertising industry were paying close attention to the advances in psycho-neurology, and experimenting with them. The massive advantage of this type of experimentation was that there was a powerful feedback loop between the experiments (advertisements) and effects (sales or responses). This feedback loop allowed the rapid development of numerous powerfull methods to influence people's beliefs and behaviours.
The success of these methods led to their adoption by the media organisations who displayed the advertisements, and eventually by sophisticated 'spin doctors' within the ranks of the Republican and Democratic political parties.
So powerfull were these methods and so widespread was their use, that to many people who live outside the United States of America, when they meet Americans, it seems as though they live in a delusory dream world.
I am not a resident of the United States, nor am I resident of China. However, I have travelled in both countries, and have met and spoken with many people in both countries, and the conclusion I have come to is this.
Despite strict government control of media, the average city-dweller in China knows more about what is going on in the outside world (ie. outside their own country/province) than the average American.
The average Chinese is more critical, and more openly critical of the government than the average American is, in private conversation.
Information and opinion in broadcast media such as radio, film and television is just as restricted, and contains just as much government propaganda in the United States as it does in China.The one exception to that is newsprint, which in the US is much more dissenting and critical than China. I put this down to the growing illiteracy rate in the US, and the low penetration of print-media vs broadcast media.
Tiananmen was the last of a series of ugly incidents that began in the cultural revolution, and is highly unlikely to happen again. Of course, students have been shot when protesting in the US, but they were probably "hippie communists", so that makes it acceptable to Americans.
And finally, the WACO incident, you claim
Waco Texas was *an incident* were the US government dealt rather clumsily, with *very unfortunate consequences*, with a group of people who were *actively* opposing the government and public safety in general.
without showing any references to back up your claim that the branch Davidians were *actively* opposing the government and public safety in general thus providing the perfect example of how incredibly effective the brain-washing mind-control techniques are, given that you lived half your life in Indonesia.
If you were to read the statements by the Sherrif's department during the investigatory hearings, you would get a completely different picture. A picture that shows that the ATF acted inappropriately, and almost certainly illegally, against the reccommedation of the Sheriff's department.
There is a lot more to this story than meets the eye on both sides, however the tendency for Americans brought up in the 'sound bite era' is to have too short an attention span to research anything beyond the bullshit they are fed by the TV.
To guage his qualifications, perhaps we can read what other say about him or his work.
And, regarding his racism, another reviewer of his work says the following:
Thank-you for reminding us what a slippery slope it is from the moral high ground to media vamping.
I would say that Darwinism itself is Racism's best friend. I submit the following exhibits for your cerebral consumption.
From The History of Creation: Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes by Ernst Haeckel, 1876.
etc
etc
Wow! That is an incredible post, I nearly missed it because my threshold is set at 3. I would mod you up, but no mod privelages.
I personally believe that evolution presents us with prima facia evidence of what has happened already, but beyond that, speculation on what will happen next is a near infinite calculation.
The idea that human evolution has stopped can only be proved in hindsight, and even then long after myself and Prof Jones have re-entered the Heisenberg lottery (ie. our elements have been scattered to the four winds).
And so to put forward a theory that can neither be proved or dis-proved in one lifetime, and then make a link between inter-racial breeding and the cesation of biological evolution, is either an act of monumental stupidity, or there is a hidden agenda.
Just what that agenda is should be brought out into the light, so to limit the memetic damage such an act can wreak.
Change of environment because of climactic change is very important in evolution, but not necesarily more important than other things. For example, change of environment because of migration. Of course an ice age will have a huge impact on natural selection. It's just annoying that the punctuated evolutionists suggest that this sort of event is required for complex evolutionary change.
While I don't entirely subscribe to the 'punctuated evolution' theory, I must say that 'punctations' leave a much more visible trail then gradual evolutions. It's much easier to find evidence of evolution that occurred suddenly than it is to find the enourmous amount of evidence required to say with any degree of accuracy 'ok, over 2800 years, this species changed from having X to having Y'.
And, I don't know if an immune system with widespread diversity would be an order of magnitude better at anything. It would be more likely to protect against a wider group of diseases, but it might not be as good at protecting against a disease that requires intense specialization. No way to know, and no way to guess who would be more fit.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. I would call a disease that requires intense specialization an "event", because it's effects on survival and re-productive rate would be measurable over a very short time period, say 10-50 years. Say something like the black-death.
On the other hand, an immune system with strong resistance to a diverse range of common, existing diseases would give the organism a greater survival, reproductive, and more importantly for humans, prosperity rate over an extended period. That is, the lifetime of the organism, and it's offspring.
Then, over 3-10 generations of greater survival, reproduction and prosperity, the effects of this advantage would become visibly obvious.
Yet another example of someone on /. shouting down the efforts of someone they disagree with with an infantile remark.
Agreed. I should have calmed down before I posted.
Perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's wrong. Scientists aren't always as arrogant as you seem to be - they don't claim to have all the answers but they damn well try to look for some.
I agree. I didn't get that from the article though. The idea seemed so half-baked that it was inconceivable that it had come from a scientist.
Perhaps you'd be more confortable if scientist's didn't theorise?
Absolutely not. However, I would prefer that they have something at least plausible before they publish.
If Newton hadn't thought about gravity, Darwin about evolution or Einstein about the speed of light?
Well, Newton completed his calculations and his equations before he published. Darwin from what I can tell, was a little bit of a plagiarist, and I think he published too early. Still, he copped a lot more grief for the theory of evolution than Prof Jones got from my flame.
And Einstein also completed his equations before he published.
I'm not sure if your comparison has any merit.
Prof. Jones might be wrong. He might be right. Or, he might be somewhere in between. But if we take your approach to science we'll never find out.
Wrong assumption and wrong conclusion. It is EXACTLY by critisizing a theory that we have been able to move forward in science. By responding to critisism a theory either strengthens or dies. Just to take someone's qualifications and blindly accept that every thing they say is automatically true is the worst thing that ever happened to science.
If Prof Jones is correct, then his ideas will survive critisism, ridicule, insults, scepticism and whatever else is thrown at it. If not, they will go down in flames like every other dumb idea thrown out to the public.
This is true science. Ideas, principles and theories that survive not because of who said them, but because their basic truth has survived all attempts to destroy them.
No, thirdrock was doing pretty well.
Why thank-you.
ME:The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth. Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains. This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
YOU:Err, dunno about thirdrock's point here. Virii evolve a little too fast for human evolution to keep up with. That's why mammals evolved the technique of transmitting antibodies via breastmilk.
My point was that now that we have mostly eliminated threats like wild animals and mosquitoes, the highest threat to our survival are these quickly mutating diseases. In this circumstance, the "fittest" attribute for the current environment is an immune system that is an order of magnitude "better" at resisting common communicable diseases, which as you correctly point out, mutate much faster than we do.
And "evolutionary event" is a silly idea.
Even dramatic climatic change? I remember hearing a theory about how the last ice-age began, something to do with billions of gallons of fresh water being dumped into the sea near antarctica, which caused a drop in salination which stopped the gulf stream from flowing which cooled the world down in a very short period of time, about 100 years. Which in a geological time-scale, is definitely an "event".
If the frequency of a gene is changing in population, then evolution is happening. You don't need an event.
This is true. I guess what I meant by an "event" is when the frequency changes exponentially rather than linearly.