What's wrong with doing something for someone else without expecting money in return? Money is the motivator for the lowest common denominator. If we want our society to progress beyond this shallow commercial crapfest, we might want to think about promoting higher goals within our society than profit. This is hard to do when CEO's of corporations make millions of dollars a year, while they layoff thousands of workers. When the rich create starvation, the starving want to be rich. It's funny how both the starving and the rich desperately seek more money, while most of the middle class remains fairly satisfied with their lot. What does it all mean?
Art is usually, by its nature a non-profit endeavor. It's an attempt to express something that is within oneself. How things have worked for thousands of years is this:
If you are so passionate that you are willing to sacrifice your needs to express what is inside of you, then you can go ahead and devote yourself solely to the practice of your art. This makes you a (full-time) artist. This does not, necessarily, make your art valuable to anybody else. It's value is actually to the artist. From the intrinsic satisfaction of expression.
The influence of money on artists and the application of the market to art creates pornography. Pornography employs whores to create a work that is mislabelled as art. Any work created for the sole purpose of selling the work and generating a profit is 100% porn. Something can however be 50% porn and 50% art. Meaning that just because some whore created something in order to sell it, doesn't mean that that artist wasn't, at least sometimes, expressing something true or meaningful in that creation.
So, are we talking about artists or pornographers? The work of pornographers is a commodity. The work of artists is not. Its value has already been recouped by the artist in its creation. Its value is intangible.
You SHARE art. You SELL pornography.
Get it?
If an artist is unwilling to be a suffering philantropist, then he is merely a pornographer trying to bullshit you.
This is the way of the world, don't let the pornographers fool you.
Copyright isn't an inalienable right, but we're seeing more inalienable rights being alienated every day. The legal situation with copyright is that it's actually an unnatural legal tool that is used to spur innovation from people (not necessarily from corporations). Fair use is an unnatural defense of the natural way of things that was made necessary when copy"right" law was enacted. Get it?
In other words: Copyright is not really a right, because it is a "right" bestowed upon the people by the government. Real rights of the people are imposed upon the government by the people. So in this case fair use qualifies more as a right than copyright, because it more closely resembles the nature of a true right. Copyright is actually a restriction on first amendment rights.
Well, it's funny that you should call that a double standard. Maybe you are looking at it from the wrong perspective? I can understand why you might get that impression, as might any ignorant person who does not really see what the issues are.
The problem that/.ers have with a company (by definition motivated by profit) violating the GPL is that the GPL is a tool used by the community to insure that the communities work remains available to the community. When a closed source software company takes code that was GIVEN to the community and closes the code and sells it back to the community, people get righteously indignant. I can't blame them. They have created the GPL in order to insure that all people can benefit from that code. The GPL makes it hard for parasites to feed off of the community (of which we all, as a human race are a part).
Now, the RIAA and Disney (among others) see copyright as a tool to maintain an eternal positive cash flow at the expense of all people. They are parasites. Yes, in some ways they do give something to people, but not without getting theirs and more in return. They overcharge consumers for intellectual "property" that really should at some point be turned over to the public domain. The actual people who create the ideas that are copyrighted by corporations like Disney are not the copyright holders. That sounds like a raw deal to me. And, if copyrights never expire, Disney doesn't have to make much in the way of new contributions to society, they just sit back with a cookie cutter and sell us the same shit over and over.
So, maybe what you think of as a "double standard" is really just two attitudes, however inadequately expressed, that spring from one set of values: The importance of the community (and the indiviual) over the corporation and the money making machinery of the elite. Y'see?
If you write a poem today and can't make your money off of it in 10 years, then you should have just kept it to yourself in the first place. Release it to the public or don't. Now, if your man who sold a million ten years later was able to do that, then that means that you missed the opportunity to profit off of what you had to offer the world. By that reasoning, you FAILED to give the world something valuable. Ten years later, if it's still valuable (which, it probably isn't, because you're not that original), then why shouldn't somebody else who is capable of giving that gift to the world profit from their WORK (y'know printing and distributing those million copies?). The behind the time limitation of copyright is that ideas become old. It's no longer an innovation to be selling the same idea for the billionth time after ten years. Innovation is what copyright is there to protect, not your ability to tax your one original idea till the end of eternity. Limiting copyright to a SHORT period of time is what gets lazy bitches like you off their asses to create new ideas.
Why not. Just "open" the tv. You can even order specs from many manufacturers. Most consumer electronics devices are "open source". The difference here is that you OWN that TV. You can take it apart rewire it, replace parts with pieces from your toaster, etc. That's because it's yours.
Now, when Microsoft sells you Windows. It's not really yours. It's licensed to you. And you can't change anything about how it works unless they included an interface to that control. Of course you can always disassemble the binaries and make changes, but, not only is that a bitch, it's prohibited by the license agreement.
So, you see you actually CAN'T NOT have an Open Source television.
These countries are not ALLOWED to spend this money how they choose. They are forced to spend the money in very specific ways. And, if I'm not mistaken, they are forced to use this money to produce goods for export only. And, they don't get to set the price. The IMF system of loans to third world countries invariable leads to the downfall of that country. Yeah, they weren't doing all that great before the IMF, but afterward they are in worse shape and now owe a shitload of money. They really don't have any way to pay the money back. What these countries should do is tell the IMF to go piss up a rope. The problem with that is that then you have to deal with the U.S. military. What now? How would you play it if you were the leader of one of these countries? You'd probably just get more money from the IMF and stick it in YOUR pocket, which is what they do.
That's funny as shit. Searching up yappari on google led me to this:
http://regultra.rice.edu/~brent/jal/jal-w4.htm
Where you will find several selections of anime situations that provoked the use of this word, if you use the find feature of your browser.
Let me rephrase what you're saying real quick, so I can understand what you are telling me I should think:
I don't like being called ignorant, or at least I take it personally when someone claims that people are ignorant. Being less ignorant will not allow us to make better decisions.
Because I am Joe Average Citizen, I am offended that the person, whose views I am attacking, thinks he is not. Since this person did not list concrete factual reasons that prove that what he is saying is true, he is inconsiderate to Joe's like me. I am incapable of researching facts for myself, so I watch talking heads on television who believe they are better than Joe as well. I do not mind that they think they are better than me, because they are on television, they must be better than Joe. However, these talking heads cannot agree with each other either.
People hate because they have nothing better to do. If God himself decided US foreign policy, with the intention of doing the best he could for all of the people of the earth, he could do no better than we have been doing. And, we would still be hated. Making an attempt to understand what other people want/need and work toward common goals is not only a waste of time, but automatically stupid because its similar to something Jesus or Budhha or whoever might have said.
Let's stick our heads in the sand and live in denial about the price others pay for our decadent consumer driven lifestyle. If everyone else was in the position to rape the world like we do, they would take advantage of it like we do. So, it must be ok. I will not examine it, apologize for my part in it, or attempt to contribute anything positive to the world.
I am whining because I don't like it when people try to show me that I'm an asshole. That's my problem.
......
Well, now that I have figured out what you are saying. Let me ask a couple of questions:
Why were you whining about the fact that the original poster didn't spoon feed you relevant research to back his claims when you did not provide any research at all to back yours?
Why did you end your post by calling the original poster naive, after stating in effect that:
1. You don't know shit.
2. You not only depend on tv for your information, but also for your interpretation of that information.
3. You believe that researching and trying to draw your own conclusions will not cure 1. above.
Well, that may not make you naive, but it would seem to indicate that you prefer to keep yourself as close to naive as possible.
I don't really have a problem with you and your views, but I don't really think you've found a perspective from which to make yourself very useful to anybody else. And, as they say, if you can't be used, you're useless.
Re:Globalization and Afghanistan
on
Globalization
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· Score: 1
That's a nice little fairy tale, but it's not really true. When we destroyed Japan, we went in there and built it back up. We spent a lot of money and many years rebuilding their infrastructure and teaching them how to manufacture quality goods. This is not the current game plan of globalization. During the 80s there were many in America that felt that we had done the wrong thing with Japan, because now Japan was out-competing us. I don't think the corporate globalists are going to do anything like that today. Sure, they may build up a certain area, but they maintain control. They DON'T teach the natives and then put them in control.
Also, the Japanese did not embrace "free trade" as the current corporate globalization proponents do. They actually have had some of the stiffest import/export regulations and tarrifs. They embrace "free-to-trade-as-we-choose", not the current US corporate backed "trade-with-no-borders" stance. The current free trade stance actually serves to break down national trade regulation and tarrifs. The only benefit of this is to the corporation, who wants to bully its way into a nations markets. Oddly enough, this is destructive to developing nations, because they can't compete at the level of the multi-national corporation. The reason Japan did as well as it did is because their government strictly regulated all international trade, so that it would benefit Japan. And this is how it should be. The US has done the same, when it was wise to do so. Yet, now, when it is convenient for US corporations to disallow the trade regulations of other countries, America is all about "free" trade.
This is done so often by the corporate controlled governments. They use the word "free trade" to promote policies which effectively say: No country can decide their own trade policy, because we, the corporations, must be free to trade in any markets we choose, without limitation. However, what "free trade" should mean, and sounds like to some is: You are free to trade as you please.
The second, would allow the people of a nation to protect themselves from the exploitation of global corporations by restricting how those foreign (to them) corporations can play the game. THAT is freedom. The first meaning allows corporate power to run rampant. It ties the hands of whole nations of people. That is NOT freedom.
Actually, terrorism as the world is currently used by most of the world is more synonymous with the little kid on the playground who is always being beat up and threatened learning how to fight dirty in order to teach the bully a lesson (eg. kicking the bully in the nuts). It may not take out the bully forever, but it sure as hell causes him pain. The bully thinks he owns the playground, but in this fight learns he may not be playing the right game. Should the bully pulverize the little kid for being so despicable that he would stoop to kicking someone in the nuts in order to fight back? Or might the bully gain some enlightenment from realizing that as long as he rules the playground with an iron fist, little kids will be trying to kick him in the nuts. Better buy a big cup America, the nut-kicking has only just started.
Ohh yeah, in my last post what I meant to be saying, in essence, was:
Why are we imposing anything on anybody? Is this not the opposite of freedom? Does this not show that we are the most arrogant nation in the world. We seem to believe that we are destined to rule over the world, police it, and exploit it. Only we, apparently, have the right way of thinking, because we have the most successful society in the world. The interesting thing, though, is that, in the case of the third world, our message is not "do what we do and you can someday be as successful as we are". It is "do what we say or else because we have the god-given right to run the world how we want to".
Democracy cannot be imposed, or it would not be democracy. So, you're right in that. But, we can't call ourselves democratic and impose anything, or we are no longer democratic. You see?
It's hard to be democratic. You may not always get your way. Too bad. That is what many in the world are trying to say to the US. Too fucking bad you arrogant fucks. You aren't going to get your way. Maybe we will and maybe we won't, but we certainly have the tools of oppression under our control. We don't seem too hesitant to use them either. Bomb away, Bush! Protect democracy, protect Freedom!! Yee Haww!!!
Is any of this sinking in?
Freedom != me imposing my will on you
And if that equation is wrong, maybe the Afgans DO "hate freedom". They certainly hate our version of freedom, which applies to them according to this equation:
You seem to be right about many of the side effects, but maybe you are still missing the point.
Yes, if we impose our form of government on other countries, we will be "blamed" for imposing our values on other countries. It would be undemocratic to impose our form of government on another country.
Yet, instead of doing this, we are supporting totalitarian forms of government in an attempt to "promote our interest" in the region. What our actions show is that we really don't care what form of government other countries have, as long as we pull the strings, because our people and our corporations are dependent upon the resources of other countries.
When our government supports another government in order to make sure that that government allows our corporations to exploit the resources of that country, are we still being democratic? Is the will of our corporations the same as the will of our people? In some cases yes, is it democratic for we as a people to attempt to control the people of another country? I say, no. Not if we really believe in democracy. But, we do so, because we believe it is in our self-interest.
So, this is why many people in the don't like the US and the US people. Because, we, as a people and as a nation, claim to support democracy, but instead attempt to control others for our own self-interest, which is a side effect of capitalism.
In other words, you just claimed that we should not impose democracy on the world, because people would really hate that. And, instead suggested that what we are doing is better, ie. imposing the opposite of democracy and calling it freedom. Well, freedom for us anyway. Wink, wink.
Do African countries benefit from IMF granted foreign aid, when they can only produce goods for export? How about the fact that the only people in those countries that benefit from that aid are the thieves who collaborate with the IMF to enslave their people? Meanwhile, the people continue to starve, and the country goes further and further into an unpayable debt. That is the spread of global capitalism. Nike is just a bit player in this game, and as such plays a minor and possibly more helpful role to the third world people of the world.
Killing terrorists creates more terrorists, because terrorists have families and friends. I would imagine that most terrorists became terrorists because their families and/or friends were killed or starved to death. As a person in this situation, you see that you are next, whether you sit back and take it or stand up to fight it. So, might as well stand up and fight it, because you're fucked anyway. But that doesn't mean you have to fight fair. When your enemy is about a billion times stronger than you, you have to be creative. So, you get some of your friends together, raise some capital from helpful allies and get some commercial airline pilot training from your enemy. Then, you fly your enemy's plane into big buildings.
Now, tell me again how the way to get rid of terrorism is to kill all of the terrorists. When the fact that they were facing death was what made them a terrorist to begin with. Go ahead, tell me again.
Well, actually, the MAD theory doesn't fly here. We have given them enough weapons to kill each other bit by bit over long periods of time. We don't give them nukes and shit that they could wipe each other out with at one stroke. The idea behind keeping them armed is so that we can keep them warring with each other, but not let either side ever really get the upper hand. Meanwhile, we make profits off of the weapons. In addition, we can justify our presence in the area as a peace-keeping force, which really acts as a big brother or protector of U.S. and allied based multinational oil corporations. The problem that bin Laden and the rest have with this setup, in my opinion, is that the US is controlling their turf and their resources. Does this mean the US is evil? Maybe, maybe not. The US is dependent on that oil to maintain quality of life for its citizens. Our leaders have to know that they can get that oil, gauranteed. If not, then our nation would go into a deep economic downturn. Our citizens are unwilling to accept that, we have been taught that we are the most successful nation in the world. We have been taught to consume as much as we can, because that makes the economy go round and round. So, if our government does not insure that we the people are fed, we will become unhappy. We might start taking a more active interest in the affairs of government. We might see that the individuals and their corporations are running the government at a profit for themselves rather than for us. They have been buying our ignorance and complacency for years. Not because they care, but because they have to keep us fat and happy until they have securely wrested control of the whole world.
So no, Katz, globalization is not a nice happy attempt to help bring the poorer nations up to standard with the richer nations. It is actually a means for the elite to make sure that their position in the heirarchy of the one world government is as close to the top as possible. Any nation that opposes this power structure will be mischaracterized as a bunch of fundamentalist fanatics who "hate freedom". What they want is their freedom as a soveriegn nation to do what they decide to do, because they know that if the current power holders of the West acheive world domination, then the Middle East will be among its slaves. That is centralized control of power and resources. This centralized control is not necessary for Katz's so-called "cosmpolitan globalization", because that type of globalization would spring and is springing from the people. The problem is that powerful people are not interested in this natural plan. It would naturally elevate their slaves and diminish their power. That is not the capitalist way. The third world will remain subjugated if global capitalism has its way. We as US citizens are merely the Uncle Tom's of this brand of slavery, whether we choose to admit it or not.
Does all of this conversation spawn from boredom? The ONLY reason this topic was modded up to the main page is that it's Funny. IBM cannot enforce this patent. Anybody with at least half a brain, can see that it is not non-obvious. In fact, the Patent Office could use a rule similar to this to avoid handing out idiotic patents in the software industry:
The birth of computers obviated the USE of computers to automate tasks that previously would have been done manually or with another device. Thus any use of a computer to automatically do anything that would have previously been done by hand or with another tool is obvious. This also applies recursively. In other words, any use of a computer to automate the operations of a computer to do work that would have previously been done through manual usage of a computer is also obvious.
This one simple, OBVIOUS rule would strike down just about every software patent in existence, and only grant software patents that were truly deserving. I can't think of a truly deserving software patent off the top of my head, but methinks the posibility COULD exist.
Well, I had to leave a lot out and look for most convenient words to avoid writing a PHD dissertation about it.
If you define an operating system as the basic software that comes on the system or that makes the system capable of doing anything at all, then it fits with my view of it. This is not necessarily the best/proper definition of the phrase "operating system", but it's how I choose to look at it. In other words, anything that can boot and run, at minimum, an infinite loop qualifies as an operating system. Code that booted then left the processor to execute whatever exists as garbage in uninitialized RAM, would not.
However, what I am proposing is a basic framework that does as little as possible of what a traditional kernel does, providing only a component object framework and access to devices. Most normal kernel activities like scheduling and resource management would be handled by plugin component objects. And these will be replaced dynamically as the need arises, or possibly several might run concurrently, being managed by a master scheduler module.
Also, it should not HAVE to run off of distributable components, though it should definately be at home with that. Like you said, components should be searchable via a single search mechanism, though possibly searching among several configurable code repositories. Packaged components should come with source by default, unless the component is under a proprietary license. And applications don't ever have to be "compiled" into one huge bloated binary image, though I imagine there might be reasons to allow it. The idea being that since all of the open source components needed to build just about any application are available, why reinvent the wheel.
Applications could be defined visually and specified in a design language. So, users could customize their applications at run time to streamline and adapt the apps to their needs. They could then share this redesigned template with others who have similar needs.
So, in this framework, if it was built of fine grained components. I could rip apart MS Office and end up with my own app that consisted only of Clippy and a plain text editor with spell/grammar checking. And if I needed more functionality or pretty fonts and formatting for a particular job, I could plug those features in and go.
Anyway, whatever, I could yap about this forever.
I think most of you, so far, are missing the idea here. I also think the good Dr. from IBM is too, but that is beside the point. The point here in redesigning the way systems work from the ground up is to make them more capable of doing what YOU as users/admins actually want them to do. The idea being that YOU set the policy and the computer learns how best to implement it.
I, personally, don't like this very much. It sounds like the next step in closing off the workings of the "operating system" from the user. What happens to Linux and open source when Windows starts to dynamically rearrange it's code to optimize for your preferences and specific uses? It gets left behind is what.
I've been thinking about where operating systems are headed and what I want in an operating system, lately. I had pretty much defined what I wanted, when I started to run across projects like this: TUNES, and ideas like this: Flow-Based Programming. I then realized that I wasn't entirely original. People have been thinking about the same things and trying to work them out for some time. But there has been little mainstream work done to get things to happen.
In my opinion, the design of TUNES and the ideas expressed about Flow-Based programming are a perfect fit for open source programming. And, there's no reason that autonomic computing couldn't fit right into the mix as well, as long as it's an open-source feature rather than a built in proprietary unified piece of the system.
The new system I'd like to see would be completely dynamically restructurable, and reprogrammable from the ground up. I think this would be a prerequisite for full-blown autonomic computing, but I have a feeling that the corporates are going to slip it into Windows in such a way that Windows stays the same on the surface, but just tells you less and makes more decisions for you than it already does. Problem is, that's what most users think they want. What I suggest is doing it in such a way that each user has total choice about how his system is designed and operated. Of course there would be predefined templates for certain types of systems (web servers, web/e-mail clients, gaming system, desktop publishing workstation, etc). So a user could pick one or more open source templates on which to base his system and then modify it to his needs as he goes. These templates would define what optimum scheduling and resource allocation should be done for specific tasks and merge this at the lower level with the needs of other tasks and the priorities set by the user or learned dynamically by the system.
I think we'll see some very interesting advances in the next 10-15 years. Let's hope the open-source community doesn't miss the boat. Microsoft sure as hell won't.
Destroying files on my computer system, which is MY property. And even hacking in to LOOK at the files on my system, has no resemblance to a citizens arrest. It is actually an invasion of my privacy and equivelant to breaking and entering. Any information that they can grok from public sources or IP traffic on the net is fair game. Unfortunately, for the RIAA, it is extremely hard for them to legally find this information without violating somebody's rights. P2P is basically impossible for them to do anything about. And, that's why their pissed. There may be a way to solve this problem for the RIAA without trouncing upon our most basic freedoms. I think this would be a good thing, but the RIAA seems more interested in clamping down the whole system and gaining unlimited powers to do whatever they in order to further protect their profits. I don't like that.
Yes, but it is very unclear, in the case of copyright, what actually constitutes an act of intentional piracy. An MP3 of my favorite BackStreet Boys song being transfered from my IP to another IP does not necessarily prove a violation of copyright law. I could be backing up my MP3 to my work computer for listening there or to a remote server for storage in case of fire, etc. at my residence. These actions are legal and should be protected as fair use of my property. However, the RIAA, needing no hard proof of piracy, apparently already has the "right" (corporations are not people and do not/should not have "rights") to take invade my virtual home and destroy my property. And under this bullshit provision that they wanted, would not be at all liable if they "accidentally" deleted all of my important business files, possibly causing untold amounts of financial damage to me and my family.
Fuck them. They cry about how the law doesn't adequately protect THEIR "rights", while they happily trounce on the real rights of real people. Again, fuck them.
Wow, I hope this sat radio really catches on, so that the market for FM radio dies, then maybe the FCC will ignore or open up the FM spectrum for pirate/hobbyist radio..:))) Good shit for free, by me, with equipment I already own!!! Woohoo! Ohh wait, what country do I think I live in. They would never do that. Gots to make that profit, huh. Oh well..
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with doing something for someone else without expecting money in return? Money is the motivator for the lowest common denominator. If we want our society to progress beyond this shallow commercial crapfest, we might want to think about promoting higher goals within our society than profit. This is hard to do when CEO's of corporations make millions of dollars a year, while they layoff thousands of workers. When the rich create starvation, the starving want to be rich. It's funny how both the starving and the rich desperately seek more money, while most of the middle class remains fairly satisfied with their lot. What does it all mean?
LOL. How many slashdot posts does it take to get to a fact? One... Two... Three... Aww, fuck it!
Art is usually, by its nature a non-profit endeavor. It's an attempt to express something that is within oneself. How things have worked for thousands of years is this:
If you are so passionate that you are willing to sacrifice your needs to express what is inside of you, then you can go ahead and devote yourself solely to the practice of your art. This makes you a (full-time) artist. This does not, necessarily, make your art valuable to anybody else. It's value is actually to the artist. From the intrinsic satisfaction of expression.
The influence of money on artists and the application of the market to art creates pornography. Pornography employs whores to create a work that is mislabelled as art. Any work created for the sole purpose of selling the work and generating a profit is 100% porn. Something can however be 50% porn and 50% art. Meaning that just because some whore created something in order to sell it, doesn't mean that that artist wasn't, at least sometimes, expressing something true or meaningful in that creation.
So, are we talking about artists or pornographers? The work of pornographers is a commodity. The work of artists is not. Its value has already been recouped by the artist in its creation. Its value is intangible.
You SHARE art. You SELL pornography.
Get it?
If an artist is unwilling to be a suffering philantropist, then he is merely a pornographer trying to bullshit you.
This is the way of the world, don't let the pornographers fool you.
Copyright isn't an inalienable right, but we're seeing more inalienable rights being alienated every day. The legal situation with copyright is that it's actually an unnatural legal tool that is used to spur innovation from people (not necessarily from corporations). Fair use is an unnatural defense of the natural way of things that was made necessary when copy"right" law was enacted. Get it?
In other words: Copyright is not really a right, because it is a "right" bestowed upon the people by the government. Real rights of the people are imposed upon the government by the people. So in this case fair use qualifies more as a right than copyright, because it more closely resembles the nature of a true right. Copyright is actually a restriction on first amendment rights.
Well, it's funny that you should call that a double standard. Maybe you are looking at it from the wrong perspective? I can understand why you might get that impression, as might any ignorant person who does not really see what the issues are.
/.ers have with a company (by definition motivated by profit) violating the GPL is that the GPL is a tool used by the community to insure that the communities work remains available to the community. When a closed source software company takes code that was GIVEN to the community and closes the code and sells it back to the community, people get righteously indignant. I can't blame them. They have created the GPL in order to insure that all people can benefit from that code. The GPL makes it hard for parasites to feed off of the community (of which we all, as a human race are a part).
The problem that
Now, the RIAA and Disney (among others) see copyright as a tool to maintain an eternal positive cash flow at the expense of all people. They are parasites. Yes, in some ways they do give something to people, but not without getting theirs and more in return. They overcharge consumers for intellectual "property" that really should at some point be turned over to the public domain. The actual people who create the ideas that are copyrighted by corporations like Disney are not the copyright holders. That sounds like a raw deal to me. And, if copyrights never expire, Disney doesn't have to make much in the way of new contributions to society, they just sit back with a cookie cutter and sell us the same shit over and over.
So, maybe what you think of as a "double standard" is really just two attitudes, however inadequately expressed, that spring from one set of values: The importance of the community (and the indiviual) over the corporation and the money making machinery of the elite. Y'see?
If you write a poem today and can't make your money off of it in 10 years, then you should have just kept it to yourself in the first place. Release it to the public or don't. Now, if your man who sold a million ten years later was able to do that, then that means that you missed the opportunity to profit off of what you had to offer the world. By that reasoning, you FAILED to give the world something valuable. Ten years later, if it's still valuable (which, it probably isn't, because you're not that original), then why shouldn't somebody else who is capable of giving that gift to the world profit from their WORK (y'know printing and distributing those million copies?). The behind the time limitation of copyright is that ideas become old. It's no longer an innovation to be selling the same idea for the billionth time after ten years. Innovation is what copyright is there to protect, not your ability to tax your one original idea till the end of eternity. Limiting copyright to a SHORT period of time is what gets lazy bitches like you off their asses to create new ideas.
Why not. Just "open" the tv. You can even order specs from many manufacturers. Most consumer electronics devices are "open source". The difference here is that you OWN that TV. You can take it apart rewire it, replace parts with pieces from your toaster, etc. That's because it's yours.
Now, when Microsoft sells you Windows. It's not really yours. It's licensed to you. And you can't change anything about how it works unless they included an interface to that control. Of course you can always disassemble the binaries and make changes, but, not only is that a bitch, it's prohibited by the license agreement.
So, you see you actually CAN'T NOT have an Open Source television.
These countries are not ALLOWED to spend this money how they choose. They are forced to spend the money in very specific ways. And, if I'm not mistaken, they are forced to use this money to produce goods for export only. And, they don't get to set the price. The IMF system of loans to third world countries invariable leads to the downfall of that country. Yeah, they weren't doing all that great before the IMF, but afterward they are in worse shape and now owe a shitload of money. They really don't have any way to pay the money back. What these countries should do is tell the IMF to go piss up a rope. The problem with that is that then you have to deal with the U.S. military. What now? How would you play it if you were the leader of one of these countries? You'd probably just get more money from the IMF and stick it in YOUR pocket, which is what they do.
That's funny as shit. Searching up yappari on google led me to this: http://regultra.rice.edu/~brent/jal/jal-w4.htm Where you will find several selections of anime situations that provoked the use of this word, if you use the find feature of your browser.
Let me rephrase what you're saying real quick, so I can understand what you are telling me I should think:
I don't like being called ignorant, or at least I take it personally when someone claims that people are ignorant. Being less ignorant will not allow us to make better decisions.
Because I am Joe Average Citizen, I am offended that the person, whose views I am attacking, thinks he is not. Since this person did not list concrete factual reasons that prove that what he is saying is true, he is inconsiderate to Joe's like me. I am incapable of researching facts for myself, so I watch talking heads on television who believe they are better than Joe as well. I do not mind that they think they are better than me, because they are on television, they must be better than Joe. However, these talking heads cannot agree with each other either.
People hate because they have nothing better to do. If God himself decided US foreign policy, with the intention of doing the best he could for all of the people of the earth, he could do no better than we have been doing. And, we would still be hated. Making an attempt to understand what other people want/need and work toward common goals is not only a waste of time, but automatically stupid because its similar to something Jesus or Budhha or whoever might have said.
Let's stick our heads in the sand and live in denial about the price others pay for our decadent consumer driven lifestyle. If everyone else was in the position to rape the world like we do, they would take advantage of it like we do. So, it must be ok. I will not examine it, apologize for my part in it, or attempt to contribute anything positive to the world.
I am whining because I don't like it when people try to show me that I'm an asshole. That's my problem.
......
Well, now that I have figured out what you are saying. Let me ask a couple of questions:
Why were you whining about the fact that the original poster didn't spoon feed you relevant research to back his claims when you did not provide any research at all to back yours?
Why did you end your post by calling the original poster naive, after stating in effect that:
1. You don't know shit.
2. You not only depend on tv for your information, but also for your interpretation of that information.
3. You believe that researching and trying to draw your own conclusions will not cure 1. above.
Well, that may not make you naive, but it would seem to indicate that you prefer to keep yourself as close to naive as possible.
I don't really have a problem with you and your views, but I don't really think you've found a perspective from which to make yourself very useful to anybody else. And, as they say, if you can't be used, you're useless.
That's a nice little fairy tale, but it's not really true. When we destroyed Japan, we went in there and built it back up. We spent a lot of money and many years rebuilding their infrastructure and teaching them how to manufacture quality goods. This is not the current game plan of globalization. During the 80s there were many in America that felt that we had done the wrong thing with Japan, because now Japan was out-competing us. I don't think the corporate globalists are going to do anything like that today. Sure, they may build up a certain area, but they maintain control. They DON'T teach the natives and then put them in control.
Also, the Japanese did not embrace "free trade" as the current corporate globalization proponents do. They actually have had some of the stiffest import/export regulations and tarrifs. They embrace "free-to-trade-as-we-choose", not the current US corporate backed "trade-with-no-borders" stance. The current free trade stance actually serves to break down national trade regulation and tarrifs. The only benefit of this is to the corporation, who wants to bully its way into a nations markets. Oddly enough, this is destructive to developing nations, because they can't compete at the level of the multi-national corporation. The reason Japan did as well as it did is because their government strictly regulated all international trade, so that it would benefit Japan. And this is how it should be. The US has done the same, when it was wise to do so. Yet, now, when it is convenient for US corporations to disallow the trade regulations of other countries, America is all about "free" trade.
This is done so often by the corporate controlled governments. They use the word "free trade" to promote policies which effectively say: No country can decide their own trade policy, because we, the corporations, must be free to trade in any markets we choose, without limitation. However, what "free trade" should mean, and sounds like to some is: You are free to trade as you please.
The second, would allow the people of a nation to protect themselves from the exploitation of global corporations by restricting how those foreign (to them) corporations can play the game. THAT is freedom. The first meaning allows corporate power to run rampant. It ties the hands of whole nations of people. That is NOT freedom.
Actually, terrorism as the world is currently used by most of the world is more synonymous with the little kid on the playground who is always being beat up and threatened learning how to fight dirty in order to teach the bully a lesson (eg. kicking the bully in the nuts). It may not take out the bully forever, but it sure as hell causes him pain. The bully thinks he owns the playground, but in this fight learns he may not be playing the right game. Should the bully pulverize the little kid for being so despicable that he would stoop to kicking someone in the nuts in order to fight back? Or might the bully gain some enlightenment from realizing that as long as he rules the playground with an iron fist, little kids will be trying to kick him in the nuts. Better buy a big cup America, the nut-kicking has only just started.
Ohh yeah, in my last post what I meant to be saying, in essence, was:
Why are we imposing anything on anybody? Is this not the opposite of freedom? Does this not show that we are the most arrogant nation in the world. We seem to believe that we are destined to rule over the world, police it, and exploit it. Only we, apparently, have the right way of thinking, because we have the most successful society in the world. The interesting thing, though, is that, in the case of the third world, our message is not "do what we do and you can someday be as successful as we are". It is "do what we say or else because we have the god-given right to run the world how we want to".
Democracy cannot be imposed, or it would not be democracy. So, you're right in that. But, we can't call ourselves democratic and impose anything, or we are no longer democratic. You see?
It's hard to be democratic. You may not always get your way. Too bad. That is what many in the world are trying to say to the US. Too fucking bad you arrogant fucks. You aren't going to get your way. Maybe we will and maybe we won't, but we certainly have the tools of oppression under our control. We don't seem too hesitant to use them either. Bomb away, Bush! Protect democracy, protect Freedom!! Yee Haww!!!
Is any of this sinking in?
Freedom != me imposing my will on you
And if that equation is wrong, maybe the Afgans DO "hate freedom". They certainly hate our version of freedom, which applies to them according to this equation:
Freedom == I will do whatever I want to you
You seem to be right about many of the side effects, but maybe you are still missing the point.
Yes, if we impose our form of government on other countries, we will be "blamed" for imposing our values on other countries. It would be undemocratic to impose our form of government on another country.
Yet, instead of doing this, we are supporting totalitarian forms of government in an attempt to "promote our interest" in the region. What our actions show is that we really don't care what form of government other countries have, as long as we pull the strings, because our people and our corporations are dependent upon the resources of other countries.
When our government supports another government in order to make sure that that government allows our corporations to exploit the resources of that country, are we still being democratic? Is the will of our corporations the same as the will of our people? In some cases yes, is it democratic for we as a people to attempt to control the people of another country? I say, no. Not if we really believe in democracy. But, we do so, because we believe it is in our self-interest.
So, this is why many people in the don't like the US and the US people. Because, we, as a people and as a nation, claim to support democracy, but instead attempt to control others for our own self-interest, which is a side effect of capitalism.
In other words, you just claimed that we should not impose democracy on the world, because people would really hate that. And, instead suggested that what we are doing is better, ie. imposing the opposite of democracy and calling it freedom. Well, freedom for us anyway. Wink, wink.
Your logic is fucked up.
Do African countries benefit from IMF granted foreign aid, when they can only produce goods for export? How about the fact that the only people in those countries that benefit from that aid are the thieves who collaborate with the IMF to enslave their people? Meanwhile, the people continue to starve, and the country goes further and further into an unpayable debt. That is the spread of global capitalism. Nike is just a bit player in this game, and as such plays a minor and possibly more helpful role to the third world people of the world.
Killing terrorists creates more terrorists, because terrorists have families and friends. I would imagine that most terrorists became terrorists because their families and/or friends were killed or starved to death. As a person in this situation, you see that you are next, whether you sit back and take it or stand up to fight it. So, might as well stand up and fight it, because you're fucked anyway. But that doesn't mean you have to fight fair. When your enemy is about a billion times stronger than you, you have to be creative. So, you get some of your friends together, raise some capital from helpful allies and get some commercial airline pilot training from your enemy. Then, you fly your enemy's plane into big buildings. Now, tell me again how the way to get rid of terrorism is to kill all of the terrorists. When the fact that they were facing death was what made them a terrorist to begin with. Go ahead, tell me again.
Well, actually, the MAD theory doesn't fly here. We have given them enough weapons to kill each other bit by bit over long periods of time. We don't give them nukes and shit that they could wipe each other out with at one stroke. The idea behind keeping them armed is so that we can keep them warring with each other, but not let either side ever really get the upper hand. Meanwhile, we make profits off of the weapons. In addition, we can justify our presence in the area as a peace-keeping force, which really acts as a big brother or protector of U.S. and allied based multinational oil corporations. The problem that bin Laden and the rest have with this setup, in my opinion, is that the US is controlling their turf and their resources. Does this mean the US is evil? Maybe, maybe not. The US is dependent on that oil to maintain quality of life for its citizens. Our leaders have to know that they can get that oil, gauranteed. If not, then our nation would go into a deep economic downturn. Our citizens are unwilling to accept that, we have been taught that we are the most successful nation in the world. We have been taught to consume as much as we can, because that makes the economy go round and round. So, if our government does not insure that we the people are fed, we will become unhappy. We might start taking a more active interest in the affairs of government. We might see that the individuals and their corporations are running the government at a profit for themselves rather than for us. They have been buying our ignorance and complacency for years. Not because they care, but because they have to keep us fat and happy until they have securely wrested control of the whole world. So no, Katz, globalization is not a nice happy attempt to help bring the poorer nations up to standard with the richer nations. It is actually a means for the elite to make sure that their position in the heirarchy of the one world government is as close to the top as possible. Any nation that opposes this power structure will be mischaracterized as a bunch of fundamentalist fanatics who "hate freedom". What they want is their freedom as a soveriegn nation to do what they decide to do, because they know that if the current power holders of the West acheive world domination, then the Middle East will be among its slaves. That is centralized control of power and resources. This centralized control is not necessary for Katz's so-called "cosmpolitan globalization", because that type of globalization would spring and is springing from the people. The problem is that powerful people are not interested in this natural plan. It would naturally elevate their slaves and diminish their power. That is not the capitalist way. The third world will remain subjugated if global capitalism has its way. We as US citizens are merely the Uncle Tom's of this brand of slavery, whether we choose to admit it or not.
Does all of this conversation spawn from boredom? The ONLY reason this topic was modded up to the main page is that it's Funny. IBM cannot enforce this patent. Anybody with at least half a brain, can see that it is not non-obvious. In fact, the Patent Office could use a rule similar to this to avoid handing out idiotic patents in the software industry:
./ers? Bored?
The birth of computers obviated the USE of computers to automate tasks that previously would have been done manually or with another device. Thus any use of a computer to automatically do anything that would have previously been done by hand or with another tool is obvious. This also applies recursively. In other words, any use of a computer to automate the operations of a computer to do work that would have previously been done through manual usage of a computer is also obvious.
This one simple, OBVIOUS rule would strike down just about every software patent in existence, and only grant software patents that were truly deserving. I can't think of a truly deserving software patent off the top of my head, but methinks the posibility COULD exist.
Either way. Why all the drama,
Well, I had to leave a lot out and look for most convenient words to avoid writing a PHD dissertation about it. If you define an operating system as the basic software that comes on the system or that makes the system capable of doing anything at all, then it fits with my view of it. This is not necessarily the best/proper definition of the phrase "operating system", but it's how I choose to look at it. In other words, anything that can boot and run, at minimum, an infinite loop qualifies as an operating system. Code that booted then left the processor to execute whatever exists as garbage in uninitialized RAM, would not. However, what I am proposing is a basic framework that does as little as possible of what a traditional kernel does, providing only a component object framework and access to devices. Most normal kernel activities like scheduling and resource management would be handled by plugin component objects. And these will be replaced dynamically as the need arises, or possibly several might run concurrently, being managed by a master scheduler module. Also, it should not HAVE to run off of distributable components, though it should definately be at home with that. Like you said, components should be searchable via a single search mechanism, though possibly searching among several configurable code repositories. Packaged components should come with source by default, unless the component is under a proprietary license. And applications don't ever have to be "compiled" into one huge bloated binary image, though I imagine there might be reasons to allow it. The idea being that since all of the open source components needed to build just about any application are available, why reinvent the wheel. Applications could be defined visually and specified in a design language. So, users could customize their applications at run time to streamline and adapt the apps to their needs. They could then share this redesigned template with others who have similar needs. So, in this framework, if it was built of fine grained components. I could rip apart MS Office and end up with my own app that consisted only of Clippy and a plain text editor with spell/grammar checking. And if I needed more functionality or pretty fonts and formatting for a particular job, I could plug those features in and go. Anyway, whatever, I could yap about this forever.
I think most of you, so far, are missing the idea here. I also think the good Dr. from IBM is too, but that is beside the point. The point here in redesigning the way systems work from the ground up is to make them more capable of doing what YOU as users/admins actually want them to do. The idea being that YOU set the policy and the computer learns how best to implement it.
I, personally, don't like this very much. It sounds like the next step in closing off the workings of the "operating system" from the user. What happens to Linux and open source when Windows starts to dynamically rearrange it's code to optimize for your preferences and specific uses? It gets left behind is what.
I've been thinking about where operating systems are headed and what I want in an operating system, lately. I had pretty much defined what I wanted, when I started to run across projects like this: TUNES, and ideas like this: Flow-Based Programming. I then realized that I wasn't entirely original. People have been thinking about the same things and trying to work them out for some time. But there has been little mainstream work done to get things to happen.
In my opinion, the design of TUNES and the ideas expressed about Flow-Based programming are a perfect fit for open source programming. And, there's no reason that autonomic computing couldn't fit right into the mix as well, as long as it's an open-source feature rather than a built in proprietary unified piece of the system.
The new system I'd like to see would be completely dynamically restructurable, and reprogrammable from the ground up. I think this would be a prerequisite for full-blown autonomic computing, but I have a feeling that the corporates are going to slip it into Windows in such a way that Windows stays the same on the surface, but just tells you less and makes more decisions for you than it already does. Problem is, that's what most users think they want. What I suggest is doing it in such a way that each user has total choice about how his system is designed and operated. Of course there would be predefined templates for certain types of systems (web servers, web/e-mail clients, gaming system, desktop publishing workstation, etc). So a user could pick one or more open source templates on which to base his system and then modify it to his needs as he goes. These templates would define what optimum scheduling and resource allocation should be done for specific tasks and merge this at the lower level with the needs of other tasks and the priorities set by the user or learned dynamically by the system.
I think we'll see some very interesting advances in the next 10-15 years. Let's hope the open-source community doesn't miss the boat. Microsoft sure as hell won't.
Destroying files on my computer system, which is MY property. And even hacking in to LOOK at the files on my system, has no resemblance to a citizens arrest. It is actually an invasion of my privacy and equivelant to breaking and entering. Any information that they can grok from public sources or IP traffic on the net is fair game. Unfortunately, for the RIAA, it is extremely hard for them to legally find this information without violating somebody's rights. P2P is basically impossible for them to do anything about. And, that's why their pissed. There may be a way to solve this problem for the RIAA without trouncing upon our most basic freedoms. I think this would be a good thing, but the RIAA seems more interested in clamping down the whole system and gaining unlimited powers to do whatever they in order to further protect their profits. I don't like that.
Yes, but it is very unclear, in the case of copyright, what actually constitutes an act of intentional piracy. An MP3 of my favorite BackStreet Boys song being transfered from my IP to another IP does not necessarily prove a violation of copyright law. I could be backing up my MP3 to my work computer for listening there or to a remote server for storage in case of fire, etc. at my residence. These actions are legal and should be protected as fair use of my property. However, the RIAA, needing no hard proof of piracy, apparently already has the "right" (corporations are not people and do not/should not have "rights") to take invade my virtual home and destroy my property. And under this bullshit provision that they wanted, would not be at all liable if they "accidentally" deleted all of my important business files, possibly causing untold amounts of financial damage to me and my family.
Fuck them. They cry about how the law doesn't adequately protect THEIR "rights", while they happily trounce on the real rights of real people. Again, fuck them.
Wow, I hope this sat radio really catches on, so that the market for FM radio dies, then maybe the FCC will ignore or open up the FM spectrum for pirate/hobbyist radio..