Ok, since when does this UN tripe hold any water whatsoever? Let's leave aside the fact that the UN is probably the worst organization you could possibly put in charge over the internet for now. Instead let's focus on the heart of the matter--
It's not yours.
No, hear me out. This isn't some nationalistic pride crap, it's a fact of life. Why should the US give away control of the very thing it created? It's like them demanding joint control over Walmart because they're so widely used. It's assnine. Yes, yes, I understand that sole control over the internet by the US might threaten your sensibilities. I can also understand where your individual governments might be worried about strategic concerns. But pardon me if I can't sympathise. China didn't develop it. The EU doesn't own the hardware. France doesn't manage it. It's patently assnine to actually expect the US to give up control of this corporate entity just because other countries are feeling left out. Instead, I have an alternate solution that's far more feasible than this poor excuse for a whiney pissing match--
Make your own.
Yep, that's right. You want to retain tactical and economic control over your country's internet, cut yourself off from the US and the "normal" internet, develop your own infrastructure and go to town. If you feel like it, allow access to the US internet. Manage it the way you want. have a blast. I didn't say it was an elegant solution, but it gives you control over your government's own internet destiny instead of being beholdent to the good will of the US. You're contry is not being forced to use the US infrastructure, just that bitching and moaning to them about their monopoly is easier than actaully taking control of their own destiny. After all, it's far easier to take a piece of somebody else's pie than baking your own. Or do you expect Microsoft to piecemeal control of itself to the UN too?
"No reasonable person can claim anything except that his plan to achieve popularity with eDonkey was through facilitating illegal file-sharing."
While normal search engines facilitates the promotion of crack, hack and serialz sites/downloads. It's all about who's lining your pockets with liberal amounts of cash versus who.
"We're basically too busy entertaining ourselves and stuffing food in our faces to realize we are being slowly robbed of our freedoms....And posting on Slashdot excercising their right to free speech. -_-'
While I appreciate a certain amount of alarmist idiocy, I always find it amazing that most the chicken little crowd is willing to ignore just how dynamic our society and government is-- That for every group looking to 'rob' freedoms, there are an equal number looking empower them. What happened to the Patriot act again? I know it en vogue to ignore the dynamic tension inherant in our form of government as well as the fact that popular policy can and will swing on a pendulum, but the sky is calling complex gets really old. The fact that some old woman can camp out in fron of the Presiden't own home (y'know, just the leader of the free world and all that) might clue you in on something there.
"You know, I really *want* to agree with you; What you are saying makes a lot of sense. The problem is that these "companies" employ brainwashing tactics to make YOU want the crap they sell. It doesn't work the other way around."
Oh, I totally agree... Given half the chance they will do everything in their power to influence the consumer to their best interests and not yours. Again, you're absolutely correct. Most of the time it works. They've had years of practice. Here, it's just so much harder because the advantages in using a computer to play media are so painfully obvious they can't push their usual BS. That, and they're WAY behind in the brainwashing curve. It's way too late to even think bout stopping this trend now, let alone regurgitate this "privilage" tripe.
People and companies like these have forgotten that their mere existance is a privilage, not a right. They exist soley at the sufferage of the consumer and the day they forget that is the day the might as well pack up and go home. There is obviously a market for PC music usage. A STRONG market. The consumer- their lifeblood -demands this market.
Do they actually believe for a moment that they can convince people that this is a stick that can just be pull away at their leisure? It's an empty theat because the industry has tried. God, they've tried. And regardless of how much they try, it's we the consumer that have dictated our terms to them. I'm sure they goddamn WISH it was the other way around and little bluster pieces like the one posted try so very hard to create tha perception, but it hold no water in any way, shape or form. And while I even agree that they have a right to DRM a serious clue is in order here. The consumer damands what music they like, the industry reacts accordingly. The consumer demands the hardware they like their media played on, the industry acts accordingly. Of course they can try to influence that demand, but are really in no way, shape or form to dictate terms...Especially when all they are is middlemen to begin with.
We have dictated our demands to you, not you to us. And our demands over the last decade starting with the first command line ripper and cumulating with the Apple iPod. Watch me laugh as you try to enforce you fantasy view of ecomomics 101. It's kept me entertained for the last decade, after all.
Have you learned nothing from your time here on Slashdot? Everything is hacked around here. Cars. Toasters. Clock radios. Come on, follow the rules man.
"Supernova 1987a Hacked" is by far a cooler sounding story anyway.
It was only a matter of time before some ditz came up with this idea. Seriously, What functional difference is their between a search engine searching out and finding copyrighted material- from pictures to music to warez -and your average filesharing program? Frankly, I'm surprised search engines have remained immune for so long as companies randomly try to put the torch to the numerous p2p entities populating the net. People have been OK with that little bit because of primary type of traffic that flows across a given file sharing network- that being copyrighted -was "evil", even though that same network has very legitimate uses in the freeware/media domains.
And now lo! We're all surprised to see it spreading to search engine sensorship. Damn if there ain't a big wopping "I told you so" waiting for somebody out there.
"Arthur C. Clarke, who depicted a LaGrange colony in his classic 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust, is not very happy about this. He argues we should not 'export national rivalries beyond the atmosphere.' Is he right? Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?"
As much as I hate to agree, I have to side with the U.S. Space Command. space is the ultimate highground and there are already powers that would seek to claim that highground. Claiming such a stable gravity point gives whatever nation that claims it a substantial edge in the movement of material into and out of orbit. This translates into more than defense, but finacial benefits as well. In the game of "Us or Them" I normally side with us as much of a shock as that may come. And unless something has changed on the planet earth that I haven't noticed, AC Clark's feel good communist social structure isn't anywhere on the horizon either. No black monoliths have been unearthed to eliminate man's drive for competeition or promote the reformation of the world governments either, so I'll side with the realist on this one.
Name something they brought down back from space that is worth all of the trouble we've gone through to glide back to Earth rather than parachute.
Umm, money? It's a metric ass-ton cheaper than lighting off anything close to a conventional rocket that will disgard stages that you'll have no chance of recovering. Likewise, the orbiter comes back to you instead of having to hunt for it in the ocean (the largest landing zone on earth) with an aircraft carrier ($$$) or hunt for it in the back yard of some farmers house on land.
Sure, it's time for an update, but it's also the most successful launch vehical in history with only 2 catastrophic failures over several hundred missions. Knock it all you want, but regardless, it's been a good ride.
"If successful, the strategy may alter the economics of the printer market. The new inkjet platform, which will initially be geared toward the high end of the market, will incorporate the print head in the printer itself rather than in the ink cartridge."
Come on now. Let's all be honest and ask how much it takes to make a cartrige to begin with. And THEN lets realize you're still goinna have to get the ink into the head. Offical HP refill kits, anyone? It's the difference between raping you and using KY during the act if you ask me.
Any animal can grasp the concept of zero. ANY ANIMAL. Quite a few of them can communicate the concept. My dog's dish is empty. The dog identifies this state as ZERO FOOD. It picks up the bowl and nudges me with it until I replace the null value in it's life. Colors, sustinance, whatever, this ISN'T cutting edge animal behavioral science here; nor does it prove anything concerning intelligence since everything from a spider on up will be able to correctly recognize a zero state in it's environment...Especially when that identification is associated with food. You think Polly just started spouting off about absence of colors out of the blue? "WoW! We are SO underestimating animal intelligence and humans are so arrogent!" Pah-lease. Get a grip. Alex and its brothers were doing this long before the lab came a long. Along with cows, sheep, dogs, cats, hamsters, etc, etc...
I would create a vast system inside an atmospheric shell composed primarily of 78% nitrogen (N2) and 21% oxygen (O2) in which water (H2O) from surrounding areas were allowed to evaporate condense into vapor, fall from the sky and erode the moutain into discreet, portable units. Furthermore, I would enact a process by which the earthen "plates" would continually shift the structure of the moutain through dynamic pressure, as well as occationally allowing geothermic energy to build up at the base of the moutain. Through this system of tectonic and geothermal energy that I have set in motion, one can feasibly move very large masses of said moutain great distances with little effort, in addition to the smaller masses via hydrolitic erosion.
Dear God.. You'd think they would have learned the lesson of Macross Island already O_o' But why move Fuji when nature is already doing the job for you?
Is there a certain point in success that you actually get paid for stating the glaringly obvious? "Wha-hah! Culture is evolving and some concepts are just going out of style, hoo-yah!" Seriously, I need to break in on this market.
1. State the Obvious. 2. Pretty it up with fancy prose. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
But far be it from me to criticize the bedrock of cyber-fi.
"Familiarity, developer participation, and market saturation are listed as reasons for failure."
Somebody is making this entirely too complicated. Ask yourself this simple question: If an alternate browser like firefox is gaining exponential popularity, how come alternate open source OSs can't compete? We're talking the same concept. Infact, some of the key players are virtually the same-- Microsoft with their wads of cash and entrenched usability versus "that other guy".
Not to beat my own chest, but the answer is obvious and rhetorical to me. It's plain as day what one is doing that the other isn't and it really doesn't need an indepth analysis treatment to see what is amiss.
"The Picasso programmer: As a whole the system works, but each piece is a warped view of reality....Which is about as big a stretch as "hacking" ones car or toasteroven.
"GTA isn't about fucking hookers or killing cops. It's a story of a guy who got screwed trying to get back on top."
So it's about a guy who got screwed and is trying to get back on top... On top of what again? The criminal world? By enacting all sorts of violent mischief? Who just happens to fuck hookers and kill cops along the way?
Now don't get me wrong, I love videogames, but the line this guy is trying to rationalize is so thin as not to even exist. It's as if the author is trying to explain away the fact that the game is putting you in direct control of a quasi-gansta whose missions are to almost exclusively commit acts of violence against rivals and society at large. I mean, let's not sugar coat this here. You can't divorse the two concepts, as well as the fact that it becomes more than "just a story" when you have user interaction. You're programming your brain with tactics, responces and behaviors in order to operate in that environment. I'll be the first to say most pleas of Videogame violence is way too overrated, but I'll also be up there in saying that it's not as harmless as some of the developers would have you believe. For most well adjusted people, it probably IS harmeless. But for a developing child? You have to be fucking kidding me. There's a reason sesame street exists and it's to program kids. Or, conversly, you can program them with GTA. Both purposely or inadvertantly will do the same thing, and to try and totally absolve yourself of the potential impact you're making on anybody playing is rationalist idiocy.
And yes, the parents have the biggest role in that development. But I wish these devs would call their games for what they are instead of trying to hide behind this conjured BS.
I think Bill Gates has a point. When I want to leave the office, I want to leave the the office there, not take it with me everywhere I go. I'm just imagining having a pager built right into you 24/7... And that's just for starters.
I'm sure there will be different implant levels, but nah, i think I'll pass too.
I am firmly convinced that anybody who claims to know what this anime is really about is full of shit. Seriously. The moment they start telling you about the plot and all the accompanying existential quasi-religious mish-mash, tell them they're full of BS because they don't have a clue either.
On a side note, what's the big deal again? This franchise isn't just old, it's stale. FLCL airing on the cartoon network was bigger news than this. Wake me up when they get something not over half a decade old.
Obviously we've already forgotten that one of the conditions to allowing UN inspections of Iraq was that no reconnissance overflights would be permitted. Period. We had them slated, but in order to give Iraq the maximum benefit of the doubt, we aquiesed on that issue. Somehow, I don't think these UAVs would have made the cut either, y'know?
And let's not try so hard to not inject political bias so obviously into cool tech stories, kk?
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, since when does this UN tripe hold any water whatsoever? Let's leave aside the fact that the UN is probably the worst organization you could possibly put in charge over the internet for now. Instead let's focus on the heart of the matter--
It's not yours.
No, hear me out. This isn't some nationalistic pride crap, it's a fact of life. Why should the US give away control of the very thing it created? It's like them demanding joint control over Walmart because they're so widely used. It's assnine. Yes, yes, I understand that sole control over the internet by the US might threaten your sensibilities. I can also understand where your individual governments might be worried about strategic concerns. But pardon me if I can't sympathise. China didn't develop it. The EU doesn't own the hardware. France doesn't manage it. It's patently assnine to actually expect the US to give up control of this corporate entity just because other countries are feeling left out. Instead, I have an alternate solution that's far more feasible than this poor excuse for a whiney pissing match--
Make your own.
Yep, that's right. You want to retain tactical and economic control over your country's internet, cut yourself off from the US and the "normal" internet, develop your own infrastructure and go to town. If you feel like it, allow access to the US internet. Manage it the way you want. have a blast. I didn't say it was an elegant solution, but it gives you control over your government's own internet destiny instead of being beholdent to the good will of the US. You're contry is not being forced to use the US infrastructure, just that bitching and moaning to them about their monopoly is easier than actaully taking control of their own destiny. After all, it's far easier to take a piece of somebody else's pie than baking your own. Or do you expect Microsoft to piecemeal control of itself to the UN too?
Wait... Silly question. Of course you do.
"No reasonable person can claim anything except that his plan to achieve popularity with eDonkey was through facilitating illegal file-sharing."
While normal search engines facilitates the promotion of crack, hack and serialz sites/downloads. It's all about who's lining your pockets with liberal amounts of cash versus who.
"We're basically too busy entertaining ourselves and stuffing food in our faces to realize we are being slowly robbed of our freedoms. ...And posting on Slashdot excercising their right to free speech. -_-'
While I appreciate a certain amount of alarmist idiocy, I always find it amazing that most the chicken little crowd is willing to ignore just how dynamic our society and government is-- That for every group looking to 'rob' freedoms, there are an equal number looking empower them. What happened to the Patriot act again? I know it en vogue to ignore the dynamic tension inherant in our form of government as well as the fact that popular policy can and will swing on a pendulum, but the sky is calling complex gets really old. The fact that some old woman can camp out in fron of the Presiden't own home (y'know, just the leader of the free world and all that) might clue you in on something there.
Then again, maybe not.
"You know, I really *want* to agree with you; What you are saying makes a lot of sense. The problem is that these "companies" employ brainwashing tactics to make YOU want the crap they sell. It doesn't work the other way around."
Oh, I totally agree... Given half the chance they will do everything in their power to influence the consumer to their best interests and not yours. Again, you're absolutely correct. Most of the time it works. They've had years of practice. Here, it's just so much harder because the advantages in using a computer to play media are so painfully obvious they can't push their usual BS. That, and they're WAY behind in the brainwashing curve. It's way too late to even think bout stopping this trend now, let alone regurgitate this "privilage" tripe.
"Playing CDs a Privilege Not A Right"
...Especially when all they are is middlemen to begin with.
People and companies like these have forgotten that their mere existance is a privilage, not a right. They exist soley at the sufferage of the consumer and the day they forget that is the day the might as well pack up and go home. There is obviously a market for PC music usage. A STRONG market. The consumer- their lifeblood -demands this market.
Do they actually believe for a moment that they can convince people that this is a stick that can just be pull away at their leisure? It's an empty theat because the industry has tried. God, they've tried. And regardless of how much they try, it's we the consumer that have dictated our terms to them. I'm sure they goddamn WISH it was the other way around and little bluster pieces like the one posted try so very hard to create tha perception, but it hold no water in any way, shape or form. And while I even agree that they have a right to DRM a serious clue is in order here. The consumer damands what music they like, the industry reacts accordingly. The consumer demands the hardware they like their media played on, the industry acts accordingly. Of course they can try to influence that demand, but are really in no way, shape or form to dictate terms
We have dictated our demands to you, not you to us. And our demands over the last decade starting with the first command line ripper and cumulating with the Apple iPod. Watch me laugh as you try to enforce you fantasy view of ecomomics 101. It's kept me entertained for the last decade, after all.
"Supernova 1987A Decoded"
Have you learned nothing from your time here on Slashdot? Everything is hacked around here. Cars. Toasters. Clock radios. Come on, follow the rules man.
"Supernova 1987a Hacked" is by far a cooler sounding story anyway.
It was only a matter of time before some ditz came up with this idea. Seriously, What functional difference is their between a search engine searching out and finding copyrighted material- from pictures to music to warez -and your average filesharing program? Frankly, I'm surprised search engines have remained immune for so long as companies randomly try to put the torch to the numerous p2p entities populating the net. People have been OK with that little bit because of primary type of traffic that flows across a given file sharing network- that being copyrighted -was "evil", even though that same network has very legitimate uses in the freeware/media domains.
And now lo! We're all surprised to see it spreading to search engine sensorship. Damn if there ain't a big wopping "I told you so" waiting for somebody out there.
"Arthur C. Clarke, who depicted a LaGrange colony in his classic 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust, is not very happy about this. He argues we should not 'export national rivalries beyond the atmosphere.' Is he right? Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?"
As much as I hate to agree, I have to side with the U.S. Space Command. space is the ultimate highground and there are already powers that would seek to claim that highground. Claiming such a stable gravity point gives whatever nation that claims it a substantial edge in the movement of material into and out of orbit. This translates into more than defense, but finacial benefits as well. In the game of "Us or Them" I normally side with us as much of a shock as that may come. And unless something has changed on the planet earth that I haven't noticed, AC Clark's feel good communist social structure isn't anywhere on the horizon either. No black monoliths have been unearthed to eliminate man's drive for competeition or promote the reformation of the world governments either, so I'll side with the realist on this one.
The Saturn V WENT TO THE MOON The mission was orders of magnitude DIFFERENT. Please. These apples to oranges comparisons get old fast.
Name something they brought down back from space that is worth all of the trouble we've gone through to glide back to Earth rather than parachute.
Umm, money? It's a metric ass-ton cheaper than lighting off anything close to a conventional rocket that will disgard stages that you'll have no chance of recovering. Likewise, the orbiter comes back to you instead of having to hunt for it in the ocean (the largest landing zone on earth) with an aircraft carrier ($$$) or hunt for it in the back yard of some farmers house on land.
Sure, it's time for an update, but it's also the most successful launch vehical in history with only 2 catastrophic failures over several hundred missions. Knock it all you want, but regardless, it's been a good ride.
"If successful, the strategy may alter the economics of the printer market. The new inkjet platform, which will initially be geared toward the high end of the market, will incorporate the print head in the printer itself rather than in the ink cartridge."
Come on now. Let's all be honest and ask how much it takes to make a cartrige to begin with. And THEN lets realize you're still goinna have to get the ink into the head. Offical HP refill kits, anyone? It's the difference between raping you and using KY during the act if you ask me.
I have to ask... Why is this news again?
...Especially when that identification is associated with food. You think Polly just started spouting off about absence of colors out of the blue? "WoW! We are SO underestimating animal intelligence and humans are so arrogent!" Pah-lease. Get a grip. Alex and its brothers were doing this long before the lab came a long. Along with cows, sheep, dogs, cats, hamsters, etc, etc...
Any animal can grasp the concept of zero. ANY ANIMAL. Quite a few of them can communicate the concept. My dog's dish is empty. The dog identifies this state as ZERO FOOD. It picks up the bowl and nudges me with it until I replace the null value in it's life. Colors, sustinance, whatever, this ISN'T cutting edge animal behavioral science here; nor does it prove anything concerning intelligence since everything from a spider on up will be able to correctly recognize a zero state in it's environment
Oh, you mean that shit that is out-selling every other OS by an absurd margin, right? And regardless of how you justify the horrible truth.
So what do you suppose polish on the most popular OS worldwide is going to do again? You can always cry "monopoly" again if it makes you feel better.
"How Would You Move Mount Fuji?"
I would create a vast system inside an atmospheric shell composed primarily of 78% nitrogen (N2) and 21% oxygen (O2) in which water (H2O) from surrounding areas were allowed to evaporate condense into vapor, fall from the sky and erode the moutain into discreet, portable units. Furthermore, I would enact a process by which the earthen "plates" would continually shift the structure of the moutain through dynamic pressure, as well as occationally allowing geothermic energy to build up at the base of the moutain. Through this system of tectonic and geothermal energy that I have set in motion, one can feasibly move very large masses of said moutain great distances with little effort, in addition to the smaller masses via hydrolitic erosion.
"How Would You Move Mount Fuji?"
Dear God.. You'd think they would have learned the lesson of Macross Island already O_o'
But why move Fuji when nature is already doing the job for you?
"The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today.
Is there a certain point in success that you actually get paid for stating the glaringly obvious? "Wha-hah! Culture is evolving and some concepts are just going out of style, hoo-yah!" Seriously, I need to break in on this market.
1. State the Obvious.
2. Pretty it up with fancy prose.
3. ???
4. Profit!
But far be it from me to criticize the bedrock of cyber-fi.
"Familiarity, developer participation, and market saturation are listed as reasons for failure."
Somebody is making this entirely too complicated. Ask yourself this simple question: If an alternate browser like firefox is gaining exponential popularity, how come alternate open source OSs can't compete? We're talking the same concept. Infact, some of the key players are virtually the same-- Microsoft with their wads of cash and entrenched usability versus "that other guy".
Not to beat my own chest, but the answer is obvious and rhetorical to me. It's plain as day what one is doing that the other isn't and it really doesn't need an indepth analysis treatment to see what is amiss.
"The Picasso programmer: As a whole the system works, but each piece is a warped view of reality. ...Which is about as big a stretch as "hacking" ones car or toasteroven.
"GTA isn't about fucking hookers or killing cops. It's a story of a guy who got screwed trying to get back on top."
So it's about a guy who got screwed and is trying to get back on top... On top of what again? The criminal world? By enacting all sorts of violent mischief? Who just happens to fuck hookers and kill cops along the way?
Now don't get me wrong, I love videogames, but the line this guy is trying to rationalize is so thin as not to even exist. It's as if the author is trying to explain away the fact that the game is putting you in direct control of a quasi-gansta whose missions are to almost exclusively commit acts of violence against rivals and society at large. I mean, let's not sugar coat this here. You can't divorse the two concepts, as well as the fact that it becomes more than "just a story" when you have user interaction. You're programming your brain with tactics, responces and behaviors in order to operate in that environment. I'll be the first to say most pleas of Videogame violence is way too overrated, but I'll also be up there in saying that it's not as harmless as some of the developers would have you believe. For most well adjusted people, it probably IS harmeless. But for a developing child? You have to be fucking kidding me. There's a reason sesame street exists and it's to program kids. Or, conversly, you can program them with GTA. Both purposely or inadvertantly will do the same thing, and to try and totally absolve yourself of the potential impact you're making on anybody playing is rationalist idiocy.
And yes, the parents have the biggest role in that development. But I wish these devs would call their games for what they are instead of trying to hide behind this conjured BS.
True, true. But then, MSG didn't appear as a slashdot article, either ;)
I think Bill Gates has a point. When I want to leave the office, I want to leave the the office there, not take it with me everywhere I go. I'm just imagining having a pager built right into you 24/7... And that's just for starters.
I'm sure there will be different implant levels, but nah, i think I'll pass too.
I am firmly convinced that anybody who claims to know what this anime is really about is full of shit. Seriously. The moment they start telling you about the plot and all the accompanying existential quasi-religious mish-mash, tell them they're full of BS because they don't have a clue either.
On a side note, what's the big deal again? This franchise isn't just old, it's stale. FLCL airing on the cartoon network was bigger news than this. Wake me up when they get something not over half a decade old.
By all accounts 99% of Japanese anime never makes it to America.
WTF ARE YOU SAYING?! That Dragonball Z and pokemon aren't the end all, be all of anime!? Don't be screwing with me now.
Obviously we've already forgotten that one of the conditions to allowing UN inspections of Iraq was that no reconnissance overflights would be permitted. Period. We had them slated, but in order to give Iraq the maximum benefit of the doubt, we aquiesed on that issue. Somehow, I don't think these UAVs would have made the cut either, y'know?
And let's not try so hard to not inject political bias so obviously into cool tech stories, kk?
"After years of politicking, France has won the right to be the location for a $12 billion fusion research facility."
Exactly my point. If you have 50-500 billion just lying around, there are SOOO many better things you can use it on, rather than shovel rockets into orbit to block out the sun.