Even if he's not, I don't care how much proof or evidence they have, secret evidence and secret tribunals are an abomination of the justice system and have no place in a free society. There is NO justification whatsoever. That's not liberal bias, that's basic democratic thinking.
Furthermore, denying non-citizens the rights of citizens is the height of hypocrisy - it shows that we don't really believe in the rights espoused in our Constitution, but simply obey them.
One more time, just to be clear - it doesnn't matter what information they do or do not have. I don't presume to guess. The step they took is unjustifiable in and of itself.
I wasn't aware that there were any countries that lived by my "ideals".
Most of your economic theories break down at the very high end anyway - it's not like the wealth woulnd't be created if they didn't get it, it'd be just be redistributed.
Here's another though experiment: How about, instead of paying stock dividends, any profits generated by a company had to be funneled into bonuses for all the employees?
The average US salaray is 27k a year. A billion dollars is about 37,000 times that. In other words, a billion dollars is more money than any 1000 average US workers will make, combined, in 75% of thier working lifespan(assuming 50 years working). Not take home, mind you, but net. I often wonder if the world would really suffer if we just capped everyones net wealth at, say, 100 million. If you make 100 million, you win, and you don't get to play any more.
(I know it's not feasible, but it's interesting to think about).
Your argument basically boils down to "people don't want or care about fair use".
That's legitimate, but I submit that fair use, and the protection of it, is important to the artistic legacy of our society, and that it's the duty of Congress (and citizens who do care about it) to protect those freedoms. One of the most dangerous aspects of DRM is the way they allow publishers to gain all the legal advantages and protections of copyright without giving anything back.
If you feel that the basic principles that copyright is founded upon are no longer valid, then thats fine - but copyright is an implicit agreement, and people advocating DRM aren't recognizing that.
I know what advertising is. I perhaps should have been more clear on diffrentiating what annoys me about advertising and what I'm okay with. I'm doped up on medication, so bear with me:P
Ignore the grumpy bit at the front and just read the rest of the post.
Advertising is stupid. And the people who advocate are even stupider, because they believe there's some sort of obligation for people to look at the ads.
I don't care if the buisness model of a medium relies on me looking at advertisments. I don't care if companies need me to look at ads to pump thier numbers.
This is one reason why I like Googles system - it's links to products that (99% of the time) related to what I'm searching for. Like a directory listing, more than an advertisement.
On the other hand, TV commercials, flashing banner ads (tasteful ones don't bother me) - anything that interrupts my viewing of content - is intrusive and I have every right to remove it from my viewing experience.
Ads that attempt to decieve ("Your system is not optimized!" "You are the 1,000,000th visitor to this website, click here for your prize!") are even more annoying, and, imo should be shut down by the FCC (as well as most TV commercials - false advertising laws should be given some teeth again. How about being unable to claim or imply that your product can do anything that it can't demonstrably do?)
I like the original idea of only being able to patent something that you can actually bring into the patent office and show them. Patents shouldn't be granted on ephermal concepts like algorithms anyway.
The patent office DOESN'T know what the hell it's doing. And it has a vested interest in granting patents - since they started allowed software & buisnes patents, the PO is actually a profit center and they use that to massive effect in Congress.
The PO policy is to grant patents that aren't obviously (for small values of obvious, I might add) and let the courts resolve which ones area actually valid.
There's a story that the author of make realized this was braindead very early on, but didn't want to change it because he already had 8 users, and they'd have to change all thier makefiles...
On my machine, Mozilla takes around a minute to load, even with the preloader. And the stupid preloader slows down my shutdowns because it doesn't close itself properly. IE loads in under 12 seconds, usually. (Unless I'm doing something like copying files in explorer. Fucking shell integration)
I haven't done any formal testing of render speed, but the UI speed is lower with Mozilla, although by just a hair.
The new tablet PCs do this - you can get a docking framework with connectors for power, keyboard, and mouse. You fold the screen over into notebook/landscape mode, connect it to the dock, and it acts as a normal flatscreen. Very spiffy.
I know it's stupid and naive, but maybe they learned something from the 90s and are happy with Google being quietly and consistently making them money directly, rather than making a bunch of short term profits in an IPO then tanking and the massive geek userbase flees for the first google clone to come along?
You've got a valid point, but you need to change your wording - nobody gives (or at least, nobody SHOULD give) a shit whether or not media conglomerates find it acceptable. The point of copyright, the very reason for it's existence, and it's only useful function, is to expand the public domain. It does this by offering a limited monopoly in return for the release of works. This is inherently in opposition to the buisness model of many media congolomerates, which is why we're seeing such draconian IP legislation in the last few years.
The ONLY important question in IP legislation is whether or not it will enhance the public domain. Whether anyone can make money, or whether the existing entertainment industry can adapt is totally irrelevent.
This is why (legally protected) DRM is such a bad thing - because it limits access to work far beyond the limits of copyright, and therefore detracts from the public domain, rather than adding to it.
The idea that media conglomerats have some sort of rights here is a fundamental falsehood, and it only makes it harder to focus on the true issues. Copyright law doesn't care if anyone makes money off of it. The buisness interests of anyone, musician or international megacorporation, do not and should not figure into the equation at all.
Have to give him credit for the journalist integrity to post that, at least.
Re:The meaning of Profeesional Engineer in Texas
on
Are Programmers Engineers?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It was a failure of design. It's being maintained by constantly shoring it up. Call it the real world equivilent of solving memory leaks by getting more memory. It's an instance of a major project that ran into huge trouble because an engineer fucked up and therefore a counterargument to the idea that having the little symbol on your buisness cards somehow makes you more capable than someone without it.
I'll take a moment to rant here, actually, because it's something I see alot with all kinds of accreditation. People have an assumption that the diploma or the logo or whatever means that they're innately more skilled than people without it - it doesn't. It means that you're accredited to have met a minimum amount of skill, not that you're privy to knowledge that others don't have.
One of the major reasons our unemployment is lower and we're all richer (some of us, anyway) is because of the boom of IT in the 90s. Anyway, it's not just plausible - it's actually happening. Whether or not it's good in the long run, for the global economy or the national one, the fact is that it hurts people very badly right now, so they naturally object. It was true in the past, also. The American car industry is still barely competing with Japan, and the reasons why they can have alot to do with firings on our end - the national economy may be better off, but I doubt it's so much better for auto workers. I can't think of a single consumer electronics device that's designed and manufactured in the US. I think we ARE trending toward a nation of managers, and that we have been for some time. I'd like to see some numbers about what we actually produce in America - REALLY produce, not assemble from overseas parts to avoid tariffs.
It's not wrongheaded unless you're watching from an ivory tower - it's a perfectly straightforward, legitimate, realistic fear. And unless you have an answer for all the people who'll ask what they should do now that the job they've trained for and done all thier lives is gone, you shouldn't tell people not to worry.
This kind of hits close to home for me - I grew up in a small area on the northwest coast in a town based almost totally on lumber and fishing. But a combination of over-fishing and clercutting killed all the salmon, and they laid off all the loggers and moved most of the mill work to Mexico, so the whole area is basically dead. The only thing that keeps it afloat is limited tourist trade and drugs. So whats the answer for all the people living there? It took me 2 years just to save enough money to move, and that was with a free place to stay when I left. I'm not recomending protectionism, neccesarily - I don't really see how it will help, at least in software - but I'd like someone who claims that the economy will sort all this out to give me some sort of answer.
All the professional systems engineers I know know what they're doing too;) My point is that true, high level, professional engineering, the kind thats totally fault-intolerant and mission critical, isn't what most engineers do, any more than it's what more programmers I know do. Engineers ragging on the software industry like to hold up car designers and bridge builders and aerospace engineers as the model we should be following, and aren't looking at the 99% of other crap we get, that's shitty and broken for all the same reason that software is - changing design requirements, short deadlines, limited budgets, lack of testing, and managers taking up all your time making it look pretty instead of functioning.
How come whenever people compare engineers and programmers, they compare the very top of the engineering industry, the people who work on massive projects (we'll ignore the ones that failed, like that Japanese airport that's sinking into the ocean) to the bottom of the skill chain in programming? My DVD player is a piece of shit. An engineer designed that, and it was a pretty straightforward problem with a well known solution. Every cheap rip off toaster, every single factory recall by every home appliance and toy company... all problems caused by engineers. There's some products that should be alot better than they are. There's been a shitload of engineering mistakes made by people who should have known better also.
I don't even know why programmers care so much about being compared to engineers, it's not like I give a shit what my title is.
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Even if he's not, I don't care how much proof or evidence they have, secret evidence and secret tribunals are an abomination of the justice system and have no place in a free society. There is NO justification whatsoever. That's not liberal bias, that's basic democratic thinking.
Furthermore, denying non-citizens the rights of citizens is the height of hypocrisy - it shows that we don't really believe in the rights espoused in our Constitution, but simply obey them.
One more time, just to be clear - it doesnn't matter what information they do or do not have. I don't presume to guess. The step they took is unjustifiable in and of itself.
Most of your economic theories break down at the very high end anyway - it's not like the wealth woulnd't be created if they didn't get it, it'd be just be redistributed.
Here's another though experiment: How about, instead of paying stock dividends, any profits generated by a company had to be funneled into bonuses for all the employees?
(I know it's not feasible, but it's interesting to think about).
I agree that he's a big fat idiot (not for his views, but for his choice of forums), and I am also very glad they didn't cut it.
"The Oscars were an improper forum for that kind of speech."
and
"The Oscars were an improper forum for that kind of speech, and the speech should be edited from the broadcast."
That's legitimate, but I submit that fair use, and the protection of it, is important to the artistic legacy of our society, and that it's the duty of Congress (and citizens who do care about it) to protect those freedoms. One of the most dangerous aspects of DRM is the way they allow publishers to gain all the legal advantages and protections of copyright without giving anything back.
If you feel that the basic principles that copyright is founded upon are no longer valid, then thats fine - but copyright is an implicit agreement, and people advocating DRM aren't recognizing that.
That's what the whole "patent pending" situation is for.
Ignore the grumpy bit at the front and just read the rest of the post.
I don't care if the buisness model of a medium relies on me looking at advertisments. I don't care if companies need me to look at ads to pump thier numbers.
This is one reason why I like Googles system - it's links to products that (99% of the time) related to what I'm searching for. Like a directory listing, more than an advertisement.
On the other hand, TV commercials, flashing banner ads (tasteful ones don't bother me) - anything that interrupts my viewing of content - is intrusive and I have every right to remove it from my viewing experience.
Ads that attempt to decieve ("Your system is not optimized!" "You are the 1,000,000th visitor to this website, click here for your prize!") are even more annoying, and, imo should be shut down by the FCC (as well as most TV commercials - false advertising laws should be given some teeth again. How about being unable to claim or imply that your product can do anything that it can't demonstrably do?)
I like the original idea of only being able to patent something that you can actually bring into the patent office and show them. Patents shouldn't be granted on ephermal concepts like algorithms anyway.
The PO policy is to grant patents that aren't obviously (for small values of obvious, I might add) and let the courts resolve which ones area actually valid.
Bush will ensure that the was isn't over before elections (even if it's just "mopping up"), thus guaranteeing him the election.
Formatting style is WHY people hate whitespace languages, because you can't use line breaks or arbitrary indentation where you need to.
There's a story that the author of make realized this was braindead very early on, but didn't want to change it because he already had 8 users, and they'd have to change all thier makefiles...
I haven't done any formal testing of render speed, but the UI speed is lower with Mozilla, although by just a hair.
The new tablet PCs do this - you can get a docking framework with connectors for power, keyboard, and mouse. You fold the screen over into notebook/landscape mode, connect it to the dock, and it acts as a normal flatscreen. Very spiffy.
I know it's stupid and naive, but maybe they learned something from the 90s and are happy with Google being quietly and consistently making them money directly, rather than making a bunch of short term profits in an IPO then tanking and the massive geek userbase flees for the first google clone to come along?
The ONLY important question in IP legislation is whether or not it will enhance the public domain. Whether anyone can make money, or whether the existing entertainment industry can adapt is totally irrelevent.
This is why (legally protected) DRM is such a bad thing - because it limits access to work far beyond the limits of copyright, and therefore detracts from the public domain, rather than adding to it.
The idea that media conglomerats have some sort of rights here is a fundamental falsehood, and it only makes it harder to focus on the true issues. Copyright law doesn't care if anyone makes money off of it. The buisness interests of anyone, musician or international megacorporation, do not and should not figure into the equation at all.
Not true, actually - template containers, for example, don't require any functionality to be implemented in the object.
Have to give him credit for the journalist integrity to post that, at least.
I'll take a moment to rant here, actually, because it's something I see alot with all kinds of accreditation. People have an assumption that the diploma or the logo or whatever means that they're innately more skilled than people without it - it doesn't. It means that you're accredited to have met a minimum amount of skill, not that you're privy to knowledge that others don't have.
It's not wrongheaded unless you're watching from an ivory tower - it's a perfectly straightforward, legitimate, realistic fear. And unless you have an answer for all the people who'll ask what they should do now that the job they've trained for and done all thier lives is gone, you shouldn't tell people not to worry.
This kind of hits close to home for me - I grew up in a small area on the northwest coast in a town based almost totally on lumber and fishing. But a combination of over-fishing and clercutting killed all the salmon, and they laid off all the loggers and moved most of the mill work to Mexico, so the whole area is basically dead. The only thing that keeps it afloat is limited tourist trade and drugs. So whats the answer for all the people living there? It took me 2 years just to save enough money to move, and that was with a free place to stay when I left. I'm not recomending protectionism, neccesarily - I don't really see how it will help, at least in software - but I'd like someone who claims that the economy will sort all this out to give me some sort of answer.
All the professional systems engineers I know know what they're doing too ;) My point is that true, high level, professional engineering, the kind thats totally fault-intolerant and mission critical, isn't what most engineers do, any more than it's what more programmers I know do. Engineers ragging on the software industry like to hold up car designers and bridge builders and aerospace engineers as the model we should be following, and aren't looking at the 99% of other crap we get, that's shitty and broken for all the same reason that software is - changing design requirements, short deadlines, limited budgets, lack of testing, and managers taking up all your time making it look pretty instead of functioning.
Because engineers are bitter and jealous?
I don't even know why programmers care so much about being compared to engineers, it's not like I give a shit what my title is.