In the case of Taiwan, you're right, because Taiwan is separated by a large mass of water, and that makes it somewhat inaccessible, so Taiwan has no choice but to be autonomous, and China's not really that motivated to go mess with them.
Kashmir, on the other hand, lies along part of India's and Pakistan's borders. The three are so accessible, it would be a factor when considering invasion.
In a way you touched on how the Internet most threatens institutions; by leveling the playing-field, it short-circuits the copious ass-kissing and brown-nosing that lots of geniuses fail at when trying to go through the academia.
Freedom of ideas, freedom of communication, these are the enemies of corporate-managed countries.
I'm surprised the Internet has even been able to proliferate and circumvent most educational and class barriers (although there are still lots of people who cannot access the Internet).
Who knows how many people with society-changing innovations have been supressed by the old guard.
I wonder, are the people who invented the Internet (and by doing so enabled research's pace) heros?
I want to wait for the investigation to conclude, but it wouldn't surprise me one jot if it was SCO who defaced their own web site in a dumb attempt to try and curry more public support or attention.
No doubt they were aware of the report, but probably got "incentives" from Microsoft to just upgrade.
All I can say is that now they will have to pay the piper for disregarding that report.
A lot of world governments are saying "The data we are safeguarding is The People's data, and as such is far too valuable to put in the hands of one corporation/vendor, so we are going with open-source"
I agree that when the founding fathers of the country established their government, it was really a government for the people, by the people, and in the interest of the people.
Almost sounds like communism, right? But it was proven by decades of prosperity that this was NOT at odds with capitalism. It's merely a way of keeping the market fair.
But now, business has taken control of government, and there's a runaway military industrial complex, prison economies...
To get rid of those elements, you first have to legislate fairly. This is what our discussion is about. Copyright legislation designed to protect a failing business model is wrong. QED
To bring back prosperity, I'd suggest converting military spending into aerospace research. By that I mean asteroid and comet mining for resources, space elevators, etc...
The U.S. was once a world leader in the sense that all the other nations looked up to it and its people's glorious achievements. It can be that again, it is fully in the hands of the people, but few realize it, as you pointed out.
>Microsoft will use their patent portfolio to try to bury open source software. At the very least they can say, "We have indemnification and they don't!" >And I wonder if Microsoft is willing to put their money where their mouth is.
You don't need to wonder for very long. Their conditions for actually indemmnifying you are constructed so that they'll you'll never actually qualify for indemnification and Microsoft will never actually pay you.
Maybe it's easy to look back and see everything with nostalgia, but I mean look at Lincoln.
The man was not only honest, but also a visionary and he was literally fighting a war for his citizens. Teddy Roosevelt and the roughriders...
Why aren't there any good men getting elected president? I personally think that since the environment you have to evolve in to do it stinks wall-to-wall of dishonesty and corporate-interest, that any good man will not be able to associate himself with any of it.
So to come back to your solution; could you *do* evil like that (bribery) without *becoming* evil?
It's sort of sad; back when things were like this in the country where you lived, you took off on a tall ship, sailed somewhere untouched and started your own country based on your principles. Now there is no region of the earth unexplored or not settled.
Hey, maybe that's the NEXT step, people will blast off and go colonize planets to set up their own forms of government and the whole thing will happen again on a greater scale...
>The answer? Prohibit every form of party funding (be it explicit or implicit, no more donations, no free airtime, no fundraisers... ) and give each candidate a fixed amount to run his/her campaign.
Then campaign would be word-of-mouth a lot more than they are...
Also, maybe the candidates would concentrate on a real message instead of publicity campaigns where all they do is try to dirty the other candidate. They'd have to stick to the essentials.
That's really a good idea.
But I feel the public would have to respond massively to the initiative and carry it through themselves, because whatever party is ruling used precisely the opposite of your idea to get elected and will surely try its best to prevent something like that. But it IS a good idea.
It doesn't matter if you agree with gay rights or not. I'm not trying to argue gay rights, I'm trying to argue for rights in general.
Take a different segment - Homeless people, marijuana smokers or people who don't wish to watch commercials. In all cases, if you make laws specifically targetting segments of the population, you divide them from the others and marginalize them.
Do it enough and you finally have something on EVERYONE.
THEN it's 1984; there is no one to defend you, because everyone wants to be moral and go along with what the lawmakers have deemed as just.
That is the reason to protect minorities. Not because you like them, but because YOU are a minority in some way, and if the world isn't safe for them, it's not safe for you.
People need a sensible plan and a level-headed approach to this.
I want exactly what you do, only I don't have as diplomatic an approach.
As to your specific points, well, Slashdot also goes out of its ways to draw attention to candidates that seem on the ball at least on issues having to do with technologies, so for all the screaming and shouting, I think readers are still basically able to make up their own minds, and it's not so dire.
>But they will get better. Americans are optimists, problem solvers. You may think that there's nothing we can do to change the system, but you're wrong because it's a fundamentally good system. As such, it was designed for change.
Yup, I agree. American are blessed by the fact that they originally formed their nation by opposing tyranny. But whatever you do, DON'T let the pigs (animal farm) rewrite your laws to a point where it is illegal for you to correct the situation. The slow erosion going on around you has to be stopped.
The tactic so far is to divide you to better conquer you. You have to stand TOGETHER, like the founding fathers originally envisioned.
OK, OK, I know a few of them owned slaves and didn't really LIVE their ideals fully because of it, but still, the vision was good, and it deserves to be preserved.
Want an example? Gay rights.
"WHAT?" I hear you saying. Well, YOU may not be gay, and you may not even know anyone who is, but the fact is that if you let them treat even ONE segment of the people as less deserving of the basic freedoms than others, you're dooming everyone ultimately.
>The American dream is alive and well. And as long as it exists, there will be people fighting for it.
>I find it absolutely vulgar that anyone is willing to meet out similar punishments for the two.
Again, it comes back to having made the mistake of giving corporations the same benefits in the eyes of the law that a person has, and then demonstrating harm.
Being much more mighty than an individual, corporations have endless resources of lobbyists who will clamour that they've been injured and that the punishment must fit the crime, so people who harm corporations suffer a might penalty.
If corporations couldn't claim their "rights" ( can anyone even explain to me what right a corporation can expect to hold? I mean really.) were being violated like that, things might be different.
OK, you've got it. My country drafted the Kyoto protocol and is the only nation even close to enforcing it, also we DID do something about Kosovo, we sent peace-keepers.
And by the way, it's NOT the U.S. that needs to be destroyed. It's the tyrannical system in place that is searching for ways to rob its citizens of their basic freedoms that needs to be destroyed.
In my travels in the U.S. I've met plenty of decent, forthright, honest americans. People who embody the american ideal, and it is treason for the U.S. government to represent these people with anything less than an eternal vigilance for their rights.
>If enforced everywhere, this law would make the entire entertainment industry implode. But rest assured, it will only be enforced when and where the industry wants it to be.
That was a beautifully sarcastic way of highlighting the truth. I applaud you. Too bad you're right.
Slashdot Mirror
A few hundred random people received
"The message you sent X was undeliverable"
spam instead.
Nice.
In the case of Taiwan, you're right, because Taiwan is separated by a large mass of water, and that makes it somewhat inaccessible, so Taiwan has no choice but to be autonomous, and China's not really that motivated to go mess with them.
Kashmir, on the other hand, lies along part of India's and Pakistan's borders. The three are so accessible, it would be a factor when considering invasion.
Want a free DVD player?
Download VideoLan Client player.
It's a university project.
It runs on just about every computing platform available.
It's also open-source.
www.videolan.org
If you REALLY love programming, then go ahead and be a programmer.
Damned be the consequences.
If you really put all your heart into it, you'll ALWAYS rise to the right place for you.
If, on the other hand it's just something that doesn't really interest you, and you're only expecting a decent salary, STAY AWAY.
Simple.
In a way you touched on how the Internet most threatens institutions; by leveling the playing-field, it short-circuits the copious ass-kissing and brown-nosing that lots of geniuses fail at when trying to go through the academia.
Freedom of ideas, freedom of communication, these are the enemies of corporate-managed countries.
I'm surprised the Internet has even been able to proliferate and circumvent most educational and class barriers (although there are still lots of people who cannot access the Internet).
Who knows how many people with society-changing innovations have been supressed by the old guard.
I wonder, are the people who invented the Internet (and by doing so enabled research's pace) heros?
>Joe Average, as a rule, doesn't even know what Open Source is let alone that it exists.
You're right, if someone's selfless accomplishments aren't immediately splashed across Page One of some newsrag, that person ISN'T a hero.
Case closed.
In case you can't tell, this is sarcasm.
>Perhaps it was orchestrated by SCO themselves.
What's one more lie for SCO, right?
I want to wait for the investigation to conclude, but it wouldn't surprise me one jot if it was SCO who defaced their own web site in a dumb attempt to try and curry more public support or attention.
No doubt they were aware of the report, but probably got "incentives" from Microsoft to just upgrade.
All I can say is that now they will have to pay the piper for disregarding that report.
A lot of world governments are saying "The data we are safeguarding is The People's data, and as such is far too valuable to put in the hands of one corporation/vendor, so we are going with open-source"
Those who do not are failing their citizens.
Ask anyone who's been slashdotted!
Or rather it CAN be faster depending on how you desing your protocol.
It'll still take some form of end-to-end acknowledgement scheme, but since it is pushed up to the application, there is less overhead overall.
Of course if EVERY app did this, it would really gum up the Internet.
I use Firefox BECAUSE it has a smaller market-share.
I feel safer that way; most of the blackhats are writing exploits for I.E., so I shy away from I.E. and recommend same to everyone in my circle.
When Firefox will achieve a dominant market-share, I'll switch to a different browser.
If bullet-proof underwear is against the law, only criminals will have bullet-proof underwear.
Crashed?
Political-correctness has gone TOO FAR!
>it happened with forethought and with purpose.
I agree that when the founding fathers of the country established their government, it was really a government for the people, by the people, and in the interest of the people.
Almost sounds like communism, right? But it was proven by decades of prosperity that this was NOT at odds with capitalism. It's merely a way of keeping the market fair.
But now, business has taken control of government, and there's a runaway military industrial complex, prison economies...
To get rid of those elements, you first have to legislate fairly. This is what our discussion is about. Copyright legislation designed to protect a failing business model is wrong. QED
To bring back prosperity, I'd suggest converting military spending into aerospace research. By that I mean asteroid and comet mining for resources, space elevators, etc...
The U.S. was once a world leader in the sense that all the other nations looked up to it and its people's glorious achievements. It can be that again, it is fully in the hands of the people, but few realize it, as you pointed out.
>Microsoft will use their patent portfolio to try to bury open source software. At the very least they can say, "We have indemnification and they don't!"
>And I wonder if Microsoft is willing to put their money where their mouth is.
You don't need to wonder for very long.
Their conditions for actually indemmnifying you are constructed so that they'll you'll never actually qualify for indemnification and Microsoft will never actually pay you.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2 0041111125109451
I wonder what happened, BG.
Maybe it's easy to look back and see everything with nostalgia, but I mean look at Lincoln.
The man was not only honest, but also a visionary and he was literally fighting a war for his citizens. Teddy Roosevelt and the roughriders...
Why aren't there any good men getting elected president? I personally think that since the environment you have to evolve in to do it stinks wall-to-wall of dishonesty and corporate-interest, that any good man will not be able to associate himself with any of it.
So to come back to your solution; could you *do* evil like that (bribery) without *becoming* evil?
It's sort of sad; back when things were like this in the country where you lived, you took off on a tall ship, sailed somewhere untouched and started your own country based on your principles. Now there is no region of the earth unexplored or not settled.
Hey, maybe that's the NEXT step, people will blast off and go colonize planets to set up their own forms of government and the whole thing will happen again on a greater scale...
OK, you can stop laughing now. A man can dream.
>The answer? Prohibit every form of party funding (be it explicit or implicit, no more donations, no free airtime, no fundraisers ... ) and give each candidate a fixed amount to run his/her campaign.
Then campaign would be word-of-mouth a lot more than they are...
Also, maybe the candidates would concentrate on a real message instead of publicity campaigns where all they do is try to dirty the other candidate. They'd have to stick to the essentials.
That's really a good idea.
But I feel the public would have to respond massively to the initiative and carry it through themselves, because whatever party is ruling used precisely the opposite of your idea to get elected and will surely try its best to prevent something like that. But it IS a good idea.
Jim,
It doesn't matter if you agree with gay rights or not. I'm not trying to argue gay rights, I'm trying to argue for rights in general.
Take a different segment - Homeless people, marijuana smokers or people who don't wish to watch commercials. In all cases, if you make laws specifically targetting segments of the population, you divide them from the others and marginalize them.
Do it enough and you finally have something on EVERYONE.
THEN it's 1984; there is no one to defend you, because everyone wants to be moral and go along with what the lawmakers have deemed as just.
That is the reason to protect minorities. Not because you like them, but because YOU are a minority in some way, and if the world isn't safe for them, it's not safe for you.
Dude, run for office.
I'm serious.
People need a sensible plan and a level-headed approach to this.
I want exactly what you do, only I don't have as diplomatic an approach.
As to your specific points, well, Slashdot also goes out of its ways to draw attention to candidates that seem on the ball at least on issues having to do with technologies, so for all the screaming and shouting, I think readers are still basically able to make up their own minds, and it's not so dire.
>But they will get better. Americans are optimists, problem solvers. You may think that there's nothing we can do to change the system, but you're wrong because it's a fundamentally good system. As such, it was designed for change.
:-)
Yup, I agree. American are blessed by the fact that they originally formed their nation by opposing tyranny. But whatever you do, DON'T let the pigs (animal farm) rewrite your laws to a point where it is illegal for you to correct the situation. The slow erosion going on around you has to be stopped.
The tactic so far is to divide you to better conquer you. You have to stand TOGETHER, like the founding fathers originally envisioned.
OK, OK, I know a few of them owned slaves and didn't really LIVE their ideals fully because of it, but still, the vision was good, and it deserves to be preserved.
Want an example? Gay rights.
"WHAT?" I hear you saying. Well, YOU may not be gay, and you may not even know anyone who is, but the fact is that if you let them treat even ONE segment of the people as less deserving of the basic freedoms than others, you're dooming everyone ultimately.
>The American dream is alive and well. And as long as it exists, there will be people fighting for it.
Right on, that's the ONLY attitude worth having.
>So shut the fuck up!
Please, make me.
>I find it absolutely vulgar that anyone is willing to meet out similar punishments for the two.
Again, it comes back to having made the mistake of giving corporations the same benefits in the eyes of the law that a person has, and then demonstrating harm.
Being much more mighty than an individual, corporations have endless resources of lobbyists who will clamour that they've been injured and that the punishment must fit the crime, so people who harm corporations suffer a might penalty.
If corporations couldn't claim their "rights" ( can anyone even explain to me what right a corporation can expect to hold? I mean really.) were being violated like that, things might be different.
>HOW ABOUT DOING SOMETHING IN THE WORLD?
OK, you've got it. My country drafted the Kyoto protocol and is the only nation even close to enforcing it, also we DID do something about Kosovo, we sent peace-keepers.
And by the way, it's NOT the U.S. that needs to be destroyed. It's the tyrannical system in place that is searching for ways to rob its citizens of their basic freedoms that needs to be destroyed.
In my travels in the U.S. I've met plenty of decent, forthright, honest americans. People who embody the american ideal, and it is treason for the U.S. government to represent these people with anything less than an eternal vigilance for their rights.
>If enforced everywhere, this law would make the entire entertainment industry implode. But rest assured, it will only be enforced when and where the industry wants it to be.
That was a beautifully sarcastic way of highlighting the truth. I applaud you. Too bad you're right.
Simple; pollution control DOESN'T infringe on personal rights, but copyright legislation DOES.
You mix those two up, and I'M the nutcase?
OK, you're right.
There ARE other goverments that are oppressing their populations in a much worse way, currently.
But amerca was born from the struggle of shaking off exactly that kind of oppression. Freedom and it's pursuit is WOVEN into the American psyche.
THAT'S why it's such a big deal here.
Try no to forget that.