Continent? So far it's looking like the entire WORLD.
Even the Canadian Senate is still discussing whether to approve the clauses that violate our 40 year + precedent cases, and with any luck, those odious clauses will be struck or the entire batch of legislation rejected.
The US was very quick to brag about how everyone was "signing on." But now that it's up to the countries involved, those nations are realizing that appeasing the US means pissing off their OWN people and losing the next election.
Fortunately, all politicians really care about is their OWN re-election, not what the US wants.
Microsoft is on "their" side because Microsoft has long had an official stance against software piracy, not because they're somehow being suckered into it by the *AA.
Much as I hate the *AA, Microsoft is in this one for their OWN benefit, not someone else's.
From what I've seen over the past decade, ALL specialty stores are in trouble. The ones who are succeeding are stores that offer products to a variety of consumer interests.
Book stores? Shutting down
Electronics? Shutting down
Stereos and TV? Shutting down
Computers? Shutting down
Diversity in business is the key to survival. Use your brand recognition to bring in the customers, but expand beyond your initial purview or you reach a market cap and die.
With manufactured code, often the only update is the header comment as to which version of the tool was used to produce the code, but at the same time, you'll find gems like me writing the GEL compiler and runtime in under a week.:)
The justification for downloading media really does vary by jurisdiction. Here in Canada we have established precedent that people have the right to preview or prelisten media before buying it. You can go into any store and ask to check out the media you're thinking of purchasing. They even have kiosks with a half dozen or more sets of headphones and a push-botton CD selector so you can listen to the top sellers without even bothering a clerk.
I download torrents as an extension of that precedent, simply saving myself the time of going to the store and finding a clerk (good luck in some short-staffed stores!) Besides, no store really wants me to spend an hour or two asking for DVD after DVD to check out until I finally find something worth buying. They'd much rather I knew what I wanted before I walk in the door. And so would I.
Most torrents I download aren't even at the same resolution as a DVD. I'm just trying to check out the movie to see if it's worth buying or not; I don't NEED a 1080p or even a 720p download to do that, so why waste the time and bandwidth?
We Canucks have been annoying the media companies since I was a kid. Even back then, the idea that you owned your media was established, and vinyl record companies sent out free replacements for damaged media because you'd PAID for the content and there was no way back then to easily make a backup. Later Canadian laws enshrined the right to make backups of the media you own, freeing the media companies from having to provide replacements in perpetuity, a complaint which backfired on them when the judge decided letting people make backups and tapes was a reasonable compromise for letting them off the hook for providing replacements.
The recent "Canadian DMCA" legislation is yet another attempt by the media shills to rewrite history and ignore the fact that the ONLY reason they don't have to provide free replacements nowadays is that Canadians are allowed to make their own backups. The DMCA-like clauses of the most recent set of legislation before the Senate for review directly contravenes the right to make backups. If the media companies don't want us to make backups, they'll be required to start providing free replacements again instead.
It all stems from the fact that Canadians OWN their media, not license or lease it.
The media companies would dearly love to get Canadians to switch to a subscription/lease model over the internet instead, but so far we've resisted those attempts to rewrite the way we handle media, and demand DRM-free downloads instead of streaming service subscriptions.
Poor media companies. All those billions in profit over the decades, and since the 1970's the Canadian courts have repeatedly handed them their asses in a sling. No wonder the only time we see any attempts at "tightening" legislation on copyright any more when the US is trying to strongarm their screwed up policies into the Canadian system.
Here's hoping the Canadian Senate recognizes the US-led sham for what it is: an attempt to rewrite the world's legislation to comply with the lobbyist and corruption driven US model.
There should be an easy way for companies with global markets to do a global trademark search and registration that applies in all jurisdictions in the world. Can you imagine a startup trying to track down potential name conflicts with all the disparate databases in the world for tracking such information?
Sure the application of trademark and patent enforcement has to be done through the local courts, but there should be a resource for finding out if your proposed name is even available. The best I was able to do was to do some Google and Bing searches for "Singularity One" and "Singularity", which showed no one else using the name except a Microsoft internal project code name called "singularity" and a European company which has a non-trademarked product they call "singularity." All other references were to the philosophical "Technological Singularity" that I was alluding to.
"Coke" would have a heck of a time trying to register their trademark nowadays compared to having grown into a global brand instead of trying to establish branding from the get-go.
Even screwballs like this guy are entitled to an opinion.
The problem is he's not satisfied with having an opinion -- he's trying to change the law to suit his screwed up world-view. You can't have someone who is clearly on acid making decisions about the legal structure of nations.
You DON'T pay for it. The people of Saskatchewan did.
But why should the Saskatchewan city dwellers pay?
So the farmers can produce food.
So the farmers can live like human beings.
So the small towns can be home to small businesses instead of congesting everything in the cities.
So the farmers can run the equipment they need to do the job.
But you don't really care about that, do you? Well, good luck surviving in the cities without food if the farmers all go belly up because they can't use the internet to sell their crops, find parts, locate equipment, review new equipment, etc.
THAT's why you shouldn't be a selfish, navel-gazing jerk about subsidizing rural development.
Government mandates and sponsorship are what got the province of Saskatchewan serviced with those facilities, and in the '70s, my grandparents finally got electricity and a phone while I was a kid. It's well within MOST people's lifetimes to remember that infrastructure has to be supported, not boondoggled with cries of "why should I pay" by selfish yokels in the cities.
The vast majority of law in Commonwealth nations is inherited from their UK ancestry and has far more in common with member nations than it does with US law. The details vary, of course -- Commonwealth does not mean "standardized law." But given the number of Commonwealth nations that espouse Freedom of Speech and Separation of Church and State, I'm surprised India doesn't seem to be one of them. Very surprised, actually.
And aside from that, installing Linux on a laptop is a breeze. I can't think of any reason most tablets shouldn't be as easy to install, if there are any standards for touch screens, that is.
Besides, ever hear of "jailbreaking"? You know, the way that MOST techies get around the BS software install locks on systems so they can get rid of the crapware and install useful stuff instead?
I've tried to run recent versions of Linux on comparably powered and configured Intel hardware.
The experience SUCKS. You can't play video without it going choppy (especially not full-screen Flash videos or YouTube content.) The UI takes a quarter to half second to respond if you've got anything USEFUL running on the system. You can hear the hard drive grinding away as the system swaps and thrashes trying to do anything with a mere 512MB of RAM to play with.
Piece of crap, in my books, and late to market. You can already buy more powerful tablets that have better brand recognition and market share.
While Google has no choice but to respond to court orders if they are to serve Indian customers and users, I think this is in extremely bad form for India to not keep the church and state separate.
People will make fun of your religious beliefs. They will mock you, laugh at you, and point fingers. No matter what faith you follow.
Walking around with a chip on your shoulder about it or threatening jihads, filing lawsuits, etc. is freaking BULLSHIT.
Or doesn't India's constitution and rights in law grant freedom of speech? Canada's is more restrictive than the US, because we explicitly do not grant such freedom to spread "hate speech" and libel, but other than that, I would have expected India to have similar legislation as a Commonwealth nation.
Then again, maybe India is just suffering from a tad bit 'o political corruption about the whole issue, with a whining little pisspot to stir things up by filing the suit over him feeling "offended". Wah. Go cry in your lassi, buddy.
I think your point about unevenly distributed population actually supports my argument about the telcos not investing.
I can get cell service in 98% of the province -- including little hamlets and villages with under 500 people, outlying farms, and on grid roads in the middle of nowhere.
Well it sure took them long enough! Glad to hear they finally did some investment instead of just bilking the customers. Maybe they finally listened to the (literally) hundreds of people who were complaining about the lack of high-speed service in Delaware (and that was just the departments and programmers I dealt with personally at one company!)
Not at all. Addiction is simply letting something become such a big part of your life that "normal" activities and interests suffer or are abandoned.
It's VERY possible to be addicted to the internet, to forums, to chat, to texting, to gambling, etc.
You don't need a physical addiction as with heroin or meth to suffer the negative effects of being an addict.
e.g. If your boss fires you for texting/smart-phone-surfing on the job, how is that different than being fired for being caught with a mickey of alcohol? Both are unacceptable to the work environment, and the employee KNEW that before they did it anyway to feed their addiction.
It's not just "working retail." I see the same addiction in over half the people I know that have "smart phones."
It's a perverse need to be "constantly connected" that's at fault, a hunt for instant and perpetual little hits of gratification.
"Oh, look, someone liked/modded-up/viewed what I said!"
There's a REASON I don't use page counters on any of my websites where they aren't mandated. I don't want to find myself being more worried about page counts and phrasing things to boost page counts rather than writing an honest opinion on whatever I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Continent? So far it's looking like the entire WORLD.
Even the Canadian Senate is still discussing whether to approve the clauses that violate our 40 year + precedent cases, and with any luck, those odious clauses will be struck or the entire batch of legislation rejected.
The US was very quick to brag about how everyone was "signing on." But now that it's up to the countries involved, those nations are realizing that appeasing the US means pissing off their OWN people and losing the next election.
Fortunately, all politicians really care about is their OWN re-election, not what the US wants.
Microsoft is on "their" side because Microsoft has long had an official stance against software piracy, not because they're somehow being suckered into it by the *AA.
Much as I hate the *AA, Microsoft is in this one for their OWN benefit, not someone else's.
East Texas ruled AGAINST a patent troll!
There's hope for the US yet!
From what I've seen over the past decade, ALL specialty stores are in trouble. The ones who are succeeding are stores that offer products to a variety of consumer interests.
Book stores? Shutting down
Electronics? Shutting down
Stereos and TV? Shutting down
Computers? Shutting down
Diversity in business is the key to survival. Use your brand recognition to bring in the customers, but expand beyond your initial purview or you reach a market cap and die.
You're just jealous that I peaked at 27,000 lines of code per day using my tools for a 2-3 month period. :)
Personally I'd be really curious to see how IBM's system rates my work at http://msscodefactory.sourceforge.net/
With manufactured code, often the only update is the header comment as to which version of the tool was used to produce the code, but at the same time, you'll find gems like me writing the GEL compiler and runtime in under a week. :)
Because you have the freedom to vote provided it's for the Democrats or the Republicans, not any "fringe" parties.
The justification for downloading media really does vary by jurisdiction. Here in Canada we have established precedent that people have the right to preview or prelisten media before buying it. You can go into any store and ask to check out the media you're thinking of purchasing. They even have kiosks with a half dozen or more sets of headphones and a push-botton CD selector so you can listen to the top sellers without even bothering a clerk.
I download torrents as an extension of that precedent, simply saving myself the time of going to the store and finding a clerk (good luck in some short-staffed stores!) Besides, no store really wants me to spend an hour or two asking for DVD after DVD to check out until I finally find something worth buying. They'd much rather I knew what I wanted before I walk in the door. And so would I.
Most torrents I download aren't even at the same resolution as a DVD. I'm just trying to check out the movie to see if it's worth buying or not; I don't NEED a 1080p or even a 720p download to do that, so why waste the time and bandwidth?
We Canucks have been annoying the media companies since I was a kid. Even back then, the idea that you owned your media was established, and vinyl record companies sent out free replacements for damaged media because you'd PAID for the content and there was no way back then to easily make a backup. Later Canadian laws enshrined the right to make backups of the media you own, freeing the media companies from having to provide replacements in perpetuity, a complaint which backfired on them when the judge decided letting people make backups and tapes was a reasonable compromise for letting them off the hook for providing replacements.
The recent "Canadian DMCA" legislation is yet another attempt by the media shills to rewrite history and ignore the fact that the ONLY reason they don't have to provide free replacements nowadays is that Canadians are allowed to make their own backups. The DMCA-like clauses of the most recent set of legislation before the Senate for review directly contravenes the right to make backups. If the media companies don't want us to make backups, they'll be required to start providing free replacements again instead.
It all stems from the fact that Canadians OWN their media, not license or lease it.
The media companies would dearly love to get Canadians to switch to a subscription/lease model over the internet instead, but so far we've resisted those attempts to rewrite the way we handle media, and demand DRM-free downloads instead of streaming service subscriptions.
Poor media companies. All those billions in profit over the decades, and since the 1970's the Canadian courts have repeatedly handed them their asses in a sling. No wonder the only time we see any attempts at "tightening" legislation on copyright any more when the US is trying to strongarm their screwed up policies into the Canadian system.
Here's hoping the Canadian Senate recognizes the US-led sham for what it is: an attempt to rewrite the world's legislation to comply with the lobbyist and corruption driven US model.
After Erlang's dynamic runtimes, JavaScript comes across as a strongly typed language in comparison! :P
There should be an easy way for companies with global markets to do a global trademark search and registration that applies in all jurisdictions in the world. Can you imagine a startup trying to track down potential name conflicts with all the disparate databases in the world for tracking such information?
Sure the application of trademark and patent enforcement has to be done through the local courts, but there should be a resource for finding out if your proposed name is even available. The best I was able to do was to do some Google and Bing searches for "Singularity One" and "Singularity", which showed no one else using the name except a Microsoft internal project code name called "singularity" and a European company which has a non-trademarked product they call "singularity." All other references were to the philosophical "Technological Singularity" that I was alluding to.
"Coke" would have a heck of a time trying to register their trademark nowadays compared to having grown into a global brand instead of trying to establish branding from the get-go.
Even screwballs like this guy are entitled to an opinion.
The problem is he's not satisfied with having an opinion -- he's trying to change the law to suit his screwed up world-view. You can't have someone who is clearly on acid making decisions about the legal structure of nations.
You DON'T pay for it. The people of Saskatchewan did.
But why should the Saskatchewan city dwellers pay?
So the farmers can produce food.
So the farmers can live like human beings.
So the small towns can be home to small businesses instead of congesting everything in the cities.
So the farmers can run the equipment they need to do the job.
But you don't really care about that, do you? Well, good luck surviving in the cities without food if the farmers all go belly up because they can't use the internet to sell their crops, find parts, locate equipment, review new equipment, etc.
THAT's why you shouldn't be a selfish, navel-gazing jerk about subsidizing rural development.
Remember the telephone? Electricity?
Government mandates and sponsorship are what got the province of Saskatchewan serviced with those facilities, and in the '70s, my grandparents finally got electricity and a phone while I was a kid. It's well within MOST people's lifetimes to remember that infrastructure has to be supported, not boondoggled with cries of "why should I pay" by selfish yokels in the cities.
The vast majority of law in Commonwealth nations is inherited from their UK ancestry and has far more in common with member nations than it does with US law. The details vary, of course -- Commonwealth does not mean "standardized law." But given the number of Commonwealth nations that espouse Freedom of Speech and Separation of Church and State, I'm surprised India doesn't seem to be one of them. Very surprised, actually.
And aside from that, installing Linux on a laptop is a breeze. I can't think of any reason most tablets shouldn't be as easy to install, if there are any standards for touch screens, that is.
Besides, ever hear of "jailbreaking"? You know, the way that MOST techies get around the BS software install locks on systems so they can get rid of the crapware and install useful stuff instead?
What's the point of having software choice when I already know the thing is too underpowered to be useful to me?
I've tried to run recent versions of Linux on comparably powered and configured Intel hardware.
The experience SUCKS. You can't play video without it going choppy (especially not full-screen Flash videos or YouTube content.) The UI takes a quarter to half second to respond if you've got anything USEFUL running on the system. You can hear the hard drive grinding away as the system swaps and thrashes trying to do anything with a mere 512MB of RAM to play with.
Piece of crap, in my books, and late to market. You can already buy more powerful tablets that have better brand recognition and market share.
While Google has no choice but to respond to court orders if they are to serve Indian customers and users, I think this is in extremely bad form for India to not keep the church and state separate.
People will make fun of your religious beliefs. They will mock you, laugh at you, and point fingers. No matter what faith you follow.
Walking around with a chip on your shoulder about it or threatening jihads, filing lawsuits, etc. is freaking BULLSHIT.
Or doesn't India's constitution and rights in law grant freedom of speech? Canada's is more restrictive than the US, because we explicitly do not grant such freedom to spread "hate speech" and libel, but other than that, I would have expected India to have similar legislation as a Commonwealth nation.
Then again, maybe India is just suffering from a tad bit 'o political corruption about the whole issue, with a whining little pisspot to stir things up by filing the suit over him feeling "offended". Wah. Go cry in your lassi, buddy.
I think your point about unevenly distributed population actually supports my argument about the telcos not investing.
I can get cell service in 98% of the province -- including little hamlets and villages with under 500 people, outlying farms, and on grid roads in the middle of nowhere.
Well it sure took them long enough! Glad to hear they finally did some investment instead of just bilking the customers. Maybe they finally listened to the (literally) hundreds of people who were complaining about the lack of high-speed service in Delaware (and that was just the departments and programmers I dealt with personally at one company!)
A higher salary doesn't mean you get what your work is worth to the company or organization who is paying you.
Getting a bigger crumb from the pie doesn't mean you're tasting any filling.
Not at all. Addiction is simply letting something become such a big part of your life that "normal" activities and interests suffer or are abandoned.
It's VERY possible to be addicted to the internet, to forums, to chat, to texting, to gambling, etc.
You don't need a physical addiction as with heroin or meth to suffer the negative effects of being an addict.
e.g. If your boss fires you for texting/smart-phone-surfing on the job, how is that different than being fired for being caught with a mickey of alcohol? Both are unacceptable to the work environment, and the employee KNEW that before they did it anyway to feed their addiction.
It's not just "working retail." I see the same addiction in over half the people I know that have "smart phones."
It's a perverse need to be "constantly connected" that's at fault, a hunt for instant and perpetual little hits of gratification.
"Oh, look, someone liked/modded-up/viewed what I said!"
There's a REASON I don't use page counters on any of my websites where they aren't mandated. I don't want to find myself being more worried about page counts and phrasing things to boost page counts rather than writing an honest opinion on whatever I'm talking about.
Don't forget to blame Ozzy. He was a pet whipping boy for the "evils of society" a few years ago, too.
And dancing. Dancing is bad, m'kay?
I'm surprised airlines have a choice in the matter, given how regulated the industry is world wide.