Buy upfront... buy tokens...
When we look at the porn-business in the past we have seen that payable services have a way of finding alternative routes. Actually this is not a bad thing. Several studies show that the porn-business actually pushed forward the technology and paved the way for the e-business we know today. The same happened on VCR market.
As always where there is a request for a service, it will find its way.
The initiative is not so bad thou. If you have to pay up-front it would be difficult to make compulsive players go broke, so a law focusing on depth-collection rather than banning gambling could be okay.
Usually the use of electrical brain devices goes beyond the "depression-stimuli" level. This type of device is also used (at least on a research level) to reduce epileptically diseases. I also know research is done into the area of making blind people able to see, by sending stimuli directly to the brain from a camera. The experiments so far only involve approximately a resolution of 100 dots (or whatever you would call it) but it is sufficient to avoid knocking down tables.
When we are talking about depression, the same considerations that we see with other types of research, should apply. You can miss use it or not. The way we live today is not natural. To much workload and stress! The human body and mind is not set for this, and we do therefore apply technology to help us. I wear glasses, and they defiantly help me to see the screen in front of me. We use chemicals to ease headaches... why not devices. In the future we can be pretty sure to see the technology that helps us, being implemented into our daily lives, and the technology that don't help us will go away. Sometimes it takes time to get used to.
Just imagine if we used metal boxes on wheels, that made a lot of toxic pollution, and needed a black clay like material to drive on that would be paved all over the country sides... all just for us to get around. Scary right? We probably won't see that in our lifetime. - or?
The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!
The "ownership" of source code is not really a danger to companies who work with more consultancy related business. We often see large websites or applications build on free software. But for these companies it all comes down to providing a fair service to the clients. Including customisation, design etc... Those companies working in this market only have to worry if they provide poor service. All programmes I know (including myself) have used "others code" as a foundation for their work. Usually coping 80% from previous work. This original material comes from examples, Internet and other programmers, so in reality most code is shared at some level anyway. We would never get anything done if we didn't start by coping a bunch of code into our project. (Just check your own include files - how much is your original work?) How often do you create a piece of code that is so special that you would call it your "personal intellectual property"? Bottom line is to focus on the service - the project - rather than some piece of code underling it...
Slashdot Mirror
Buy upfront... buy tokens...
When we look at the porn-business in the past we have seen that payable services have a way of finding alternative routes. Actually this is not a bad thing. Several studies show that the porn-business actually pushed forward the technology and paved the way for the e-business we know today. The same happened on VCR market.
As always where there is a request for a service, it will find its way.
The initiative is not so bad thou. If you have to pay up-front it would be difficult to make compulsive players go broke, so a law focusing on depth-collection rather than banning gambling could be okay.
Saggi
Usually the use of electrical brain devices goes beyond the "depression-stimuli" level. This type of device is also used (at least on a research level) to reduce epileptically diseases. I also know research is done into the area of making blind people able to see, by sending stimuli directly to the brain from a camera. The experiments so far only involve approximately a resolution of 100 dots (or whatever you would call it) but it is sufficient to avoid knocking down tables.
When we are talking about depression, the same considerations that we see with other types of research, should apply. You can miss use it or not. The way we live today is not natural. To much workload and stress! The human body and mind is not set for this, and we do therefore apply technology to help us. I wear glasses, and they defiantly help me to see the screen in front of me. We use chemicals to ease headaches... why not devices. In the future we can be pretty sure to see the technology that helps us, being implemented into our daily lives, and the technology that don't help us will go away. Sometimes it takes time to get used to.
Just imagine if we used metal boxes on wheels, that made a lot of toxic pollution, and needed a black clay like material to drive on that would be paved all over the country sides... all just for us to get around. Scary right? We probably won't see that in our lifetime. - or?
The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!
Saggi
The "ownership" of source code is not really a danger to companies who work with more consultancy related business. We often see large websites or applications build on free software. But for these companies it all comes down to providing a fair service to the clients. Including customisation, design etc... Those companies working in this market only have to worry if they provide poor service. All programmes I know (including myself) have used "others code" as a foundation for their work. Usually coping 80% from previous work. This original material comes from examples, Internet and other programmers, so in reality most code is shared at some level anyway. We would never get anything done if we didn't start by coping a bunch of code into our project. (Just check your own include files - how much is your original work?) How often do you create a piece of code that is so special that you would call it your "personal intellectual property"? Bottom line is to focus on the service - the project - rather than some piece of code underling it...
Saggi