There are some I can respect, even admire, like McCain.
Why? Yes - he is a true war hero. But... After all of the dirty tricks in South Carolina, he had no problems playing lovey-dovey with and giving his endorsement to the man who had just shat on his wartime record and accused him of "having a black child" (for the record - he does have an adopted black child - the connotation during that part of the campaign was that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock; for some reason, a very big issue with Southern white voters). And he came back and did the same thing during the next election. His reward? Everyone from his party accusing him of being a "Liberal" (for some reason, a swear word among the Republicans). If he can't stand up to a piss ant like George Bush and the rest of his party, why should I think he has enough spine to stand up for anything else?
What surprises me more is that I meet people every day who still have a love for government.
I tend to think it's not so much that people love government as much as they shudder when presented with the libe-anarcho alternatives. Libertarians have no solution for private entities amassing crushing power. Anarchists have no solution for anything. All-in-all, given a choice between private organizations I have absolutely no control over being in control vs. a government over which I could, if sufficiently motivated, actually have a modicum of control, I'll choose the latter any time.
Is it an ideal solution? No. But it's probably the least bad solution.
Maybe if they got the fucking chip off their shoulder and dispensed with the paranoia, maybe someone actually might be interested in talking to them. Y'all seem to be confusing not giving a shit about (not true BTW - a great deal of tax money from urban areas flows to these regions) with hosility.
On top of all that, the dirty truth of high tech is that anyone can do research anywhere, with inexpensive equipment bought on Ebay...
I seriously doubt you're going to do cutting edge research in Chemistry, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Genetic Engineering, Nanomachinery, IC Process Design, or Drug Design with equipment bought on EBay. Nor is the government likely to let you do some of them unless you have big money behind your name (and usually, that big money isn't interested in letting you play with their machines unless you do have those credentials). But that's OK. You can always turn out your little craptacular piece of software that anyone with half a brain will copy in five minutes, anyway.
Chances are some mid-level project manager outsourced the DRM development to some thrid-world job shop that realy doesn't understand or give a rat's ass about IP issues at all. And, of course, when the stuff came back, same mid-level (probably non-technical) functionary didn't even think about where the code came from, what it was made of, or anything else. In short, the kind of thing that goes on all the time unless you actually know what the hell you're doing...
The question is whether the mere speculation that 60 Hz fields can harm people, with no supporting evidence, should cause us to... sue the power company over every case of cancer.
Of course not! The potential gain of large amounts of easy money should cause us to sue the power company over every case of cancer.
Obviously, someone hasn't been listening at the school of American culture.
which is why while he was perhaps the most brilliant scientist to ever exist on this planet, he died virtually pennyless.
Towards the end, he was quite a bit of nutter, as well, with an almost "Howard Hughes"-ian fear of germs and disease. Though he never did get to the point of locking himself into an isolated room, his illness did start to cut into the amount of work he could accomplish. It's a shame. From all accounts he was, nonetheless, a brilliant man.
If an x86 whitebox running OS X can get the same job done in a functionally equivilent manner as a more expensive Apple-branded OS X machine, why buy the Apple machine?
And that's why Apple isn't selling OS X for white (or gray or black) boxes. What I can't figure out is why the crowd that hangs out here screaming about how government shouldn't do anything for anyone expects Apple to go against their best interests to gift them with a cheap white box computer while giving themselves beaucoup support headaches. Do you fools think Apple hasn't analyzed the math here? Jeez, at least be consistant.
I hear that another approach he's looking at is to fund mosquito control - you know, one blood sucker getting rid of his competitors.
OK, now that the obvious joke is out of the way, you do have to hand it to the guy for doing this. As an orphan disease, malaria research doesn't get nearly enough funding. Doing something like this puts him on the side of the angels (for this particular skirmish).
Wow! I didn't know that software did Questions and Answers! OK, people - one last time...
Q&A=Question and Answer (as in, "The speaker was available for a Q&A session following his presentation.") QA=Quality Assurance (i.e., the process by which a product or service is assured of suitability for use).
The next one of you who messes this up is really going to get an earful.
In the final analysis, bands have limits dictated by the laws of physics. And communications within these bands can be disabled by overrunning these limits. You'd still need the FCC to set emission limits (probably on a per band basis) and for enforcement against people whose transmitters were a bit too powerful or whose antennae were a bit too long (my apologies to any Martians in the neighborhood). Otherwise, anyone could set up a really big spark gap transmitter and fsck over any band(s) they wanted.
Is spectrum inefficiently allocated now? Yes. But total anarchy won't work either. You still need someone to set the rules so that everyone can swim in the pool.
The specifications for military semiconductors were so onerous that most part manufacturers simply gave up on it.
And this is precisely the reason that the specifications are so onerous.
Do you really think it makes a difference that a screwdriver meets this rigorous of a specification in 90% of the cases? No. It's just another way for the powers that be to pass big dollar contracts to their buds in industry. Often these contracts are written in such a precise way to make sure that only one or two contractors (and usually one) can do the job.
Oh yeah, and the cost for doing these contracts isn't that bad if the cost of all the specialists and paperwork is amortized over hundreds of projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Yes - he is a true war hero. But... After all of the dirty tricks in South Carolina, he had no problems playing lovey-dovey with and giving his endorsement to the man who had just shat on his wartime record and accused him of "having a black child" (for the record - he does have an adopted black child - the connotation during that part of the campaign was that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock; for some reason, a very big issue with Southern white voters). And he came back and did the same thing during the next election. His reward? Everyone from his party accusing him of being a "Liberal" (for some reason, a swear word among the Republicans). If he can't stand up to a piss ant like George Bush and the rest of his party, why should I think he has enough spine to stand up for anything else?
I tend to think it's not so much that people love government as much as they shudder when presented with the libe-anarcho alternatives. Libertarians have no solution for private entities amassing crushing power. Anarchists have no solution for anything. All-in-all, given a choice between private organizations I have absolutely no control over being in control vs. a government over which I could, if sufficiently motivated, actually have a modicum of control, I'll choose the latter any time.
Is it an ideal solution? No. But it's probably the least bad solution.
Because you're all ignorant savages?
Maybe if they got the fucking chip off their shoulder and dispensed with the paranoia, maybe someone actually might be interested in talking to them. Y'all seem to be confusing not giving a shit about (not true BTW - a great deal of tax money from urban areas flows to these regions) with hosility.
I seriously doubt you're going to do cutting edge research in Chemistry, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Genetic Engineering, Nanomachinery, IC Process Design, or Drug Design with equipment bought on EBay. Nor is the government likely to let you do some of them unless you have big money behind your name (and usually, that big money isn't interested in letting you play with their machines unless you do have those credentials). But that's OK. You can always turn out your little craptacular piece of software that anyone with half a brain will copy in five minutes, anyway.
Chances are some mid-level project manager outsourced the DRM development to some thrid-world job shop that realy doesn't understand or give a rat's ass about IP issues at all. And, of course, when the stuff came back, same mid-level (probably non-technical) functionary didn't even think about where the code came from, what it was made of, or anything else. In short, the kind of thing that goes on all the time unless you actually know what the hell you're doing...
I heard they were having problems keeping their margins up.
Of course not! The potential gain of large amounts of easy money should cause us to sue the power company over every case of cancer.
Obviously, someone hasn't been listening at the school of American culture.
Towards the end, he was quite a bit of nutter, as well, with an almost "Howard Hughes"-ian fear of germs and disease. Though he never did get to the point of locking himself into an isolated room, his illness did start to cut into the amount of work he could accomplish. It's a shame. From all accounts he was, nonetheless, a brilliant man.
And that's why Apple isn't selling OS X for white (or gray or black) boxes. What I can't figure out is why the crowd that hangs out here screaming about how government shouldn't do anything for anyone expects Apple to go against their best interests to gift them with a cheap white box computer while giving themselves beaucoup support headaches. Do you fools think Apple hasn't analyzed the math here? Jeez, at least be consistant.
OK, now that the obvious joke is out of the way, you do have to hand it to the guy for doing this. As an orphan disease, malaria research doesn't get nearly enough funding. Doing something like this puts him on the side of the angels (for this particular skirmish).
Congress? Or, in the UK, Parliament?
Yeah! And the ballerina ain't bad, either!
Should be "...you never really wanted on a phone."
No! Ducks are the other school. They should be advised to Beaver.
Wow! I didn't know that software did Questions and Answers! OK, people - one last time...
Q&A=Question and Answer (as in, "The speaker was available for a Q&A session following his presentation.")
QA=Quality Assurance (i.e., the process by which a product or service is assured of suitability for use).
The next one of you who messes this up is really going to get an earful.
Sincerely,
Mr. Language Nazi
Dammit, ESR! Stop trolling under a fake pseudonym!
Easy. HP. I've hated them ever since Carly...
Well, for one, this little agency called the FCC.
In the final analysis, bands have limits dictated by the laws of physics. And communications within these bands can be disabled by overrunning these limits. You'd still need the FCC to set emission limits (probably on a per band basis) and for enforcement against people whose transmitters were a bit too powerful or whose antennae were a bit too long (my apologies to any Martians in the neighborhood). Otherwise, anyone could set up a really big spark gap transmitter and fsck over any band(s) they wanted.
Is spectrum inefficiently allocated now? Yes. But total anarchy won't work either. You still need someone to set the rules so that everyone can swim in the pool.
What most of us do every day... Trading his time and effort for a pay check.
And this is precisely the reason that the specifications are so onerous.
Do you really think it makes a difference that a screwdriver meets this rigorous of a specification in 90% of the cases? No. It's just another way for the powers that be to pass big dollar contracts to their buds in industry. Often these contracts are written in such a precise way to make sure that only one or two contractors (and usually one) can do the job.
Oh yeah, and the cost for doing these contracts isn't that bad if the cost of all the specialists and paperwork is amortized over hundreds of projects.
But it's Korean language only.
Woot! And we got video of them, too!
I put my money on the Smurfs. An airstrike has already been launched in retaliation.
Why? Was it sick?
No! It was just a down in the mouth!
Thank you folks! I'll be here all week! Try the veal!