>>You don't let that huge of a population use something that is truly still "beta."
I used to play a game called Dragon Realms, stared as an AOL game, then went to the web. It's been around a good 12 years now and it's still in "beta". Hell, they were even making $12/month from all the customers... who were paying for a beta service. They even got some to fork over $40/month for 'premium' or 'platinum' or some other such nonesense...
Did they play a more finished version of the game? Nope. They just got some items and alterations and junk... but the game was the same. Beta for all, apoligies for none.
I agree with you, as far as preventing stagnation goes.
However there are plenty of areas in the world, and in the US, that will be 'behind the curve'. By behind the curve, I mean areas that won't be able to afford the technology... even the semi-outdated technology.
While the constant innovation will continuously bring up the quality for those riding the curve, abvoe the curve, or only slightly behind it, those who are in drastically poorly off areas will be completely ignored by business.
In this respect, while the behavior may seem anti-competitive, the municipality is essentially providing a service that the free market doesn't see it as profitable to provide. The free market had decided not to compete there... and so the government isn't being anti-competitive, as there simply wasn't any in that market anyway.
The government had to mandate that phone companies provide phone service to the bible belt and rural areas, even when it was unprofitable for the phone companies to do so. Think about it... they had to build all these phone lines, set up all this infrastructure, for a few dozen people. It was a total waste of money, but they were required.
Perhaps thats a solution... but if its still out of the price range of every one in the region, then the business had just been required to set up infrastructure and no one benefitted, because the people can't even pay for it. This is where government has a right to provide a service. It has every right to do so.
Not to mention crazy people out in the boonies (or just all the Texans for that matter) who fire their guns up in the air during parties, new years, etc etc.
Stupid local custom... dangerous. Outlaw guns? no way! It's their right to do stupid things with guns! Just not with lazer pointers.
Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.
I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.
In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.
While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.
"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.
For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I said, "and others?"
"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method."
"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."
"On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".
"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
Imagine the absolute surge of innovation that would occur if tomorrow, every piece of information was freed? Imagine every patent invalidated, every exclusive right to copy dissipated... culture opened up to the masses.
Sure, it might not all be worthwhile, and when you lower the barrier to entry, you're going to get a lot of useless crap... but you'll also get a lot of good stuff too. And if slashdot can make a moderating system that sorts through the noise to find viable signals, I'm sure we'd be able to do the same thing with whatever stretches of innovation came after...
As an aside, I went to China for a week over the summer and got to talk with college students at Tianjin, about 2 hours south of Beijing.
The students there, 22, 21, they've never heard of the massacre at the square. Not only that, but they don't believe it happened, and are quite certain that if it did happen, their government would have told them.
Clearly, one of the problems with the English language is that its rules are all over the place.
Mark Twain had a great idea on how to fix it, and rather than elaborate for you, I'll just paste his work here. Remember, it's for the good of the language.
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language By Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai iwth useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
(don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to) which gives your credibility a hit. Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.
this newest article on the front page
says OS development isn't quite all the rage... i mean people love it, but experts are in short supply
for the free OS programs you don't need to buy now this lack of experts
should start ringing bells in the ears of those corps
who might lose business to dells
I say OS is great and OS is grand,
but in order to become the way of the land you must fight, you must train,
craft experts all your own fuck this college nonsense,
throw a student a bone train them yourself,
don't trust for-profit schools because those learning institutes
graduate too many fools
The article says different, says colleges are grand
and they've started to make linux the law of the land But I say that's bunk, and that they're full of crap,
and are way less accurate than my campus LDAP See I'm at RIT, in the CS track
and I say this path is filled with cheap hacks In my Operating Systems class
I figured I'd learn How to make a small kernal,
or have small changes to discern... But instead all they taught
was threads in C a topic I learned
IN CS THREE! ANd as half the students
smiled with glee, There was one who was pissed,
and that there was me.
You can say all you want, but schools are slow to turn, and I'll have learned very little by the time i adjurn, I'm no OS expert, but I've got karma to burn...
Something slightly different would work much better, I believe, at least if our goal is to maximize total for your group instead of just one instantiation of your program.
Specifically... it's nice to have 100 slaves starve themselves and work for you, where you get 5 and they get 0. If you intend on letting your slaves starve and then die, then you've just done very very well for yourself.
If you and your slave cooperated, however, you'd each get 3, a total of 6, which is greater than 5 of course.
So perhaps the best thing to do is cooperate with your slaves for a total of 6, and then take some away for yourself. Then you don't have to waste 2 going to find more slaves;)
Or... use propaganda to convince your slaves to give you 2 of their 3 from the cooperation because you need to use those 2 to keep them safe from terrorists. Or call it "taxes", or tithe, or some such.
In this way you'll be doing right by the group while still being an exploitative bastard of an overlord, and your people will love you for it. Don't outright screw your group by not cooperating... cooperate with them! Then take the benefits.
Maybe the 'script kiddies' aren't exactly what he was describing, and there needs to be a new term for the characters in the story, but what he did describe certainly is a culture.
When I was 15 I had a friend give me a few scripts which i ran randomly for a few days. I didn't go to chat rooms for that stuff. I didn't talk online with those people, and I didn't become involved in the alliances of groups. I was given a program, and I used it to get me some earthlink passwords. That's a script-kiddie.
The descriptions in the story, though, is definitely a culture where alliances are formed, a circle of silence and shadow is formed around those with 0day-whatever access, and the people who program the exploits most likely came up into the circle of trust by way of these allianced groups, gaining the trust of people higher and higher and showing competance in their coding.
The fact that attacks on government machines occur not for the purpose of attacking a government machine, but instead to trick your opponent into doing it and getting him/her into trouble shows it's a culture of its own, one that has no respect for the predominant culture and is willing to use our tools to hurt their enemy.
So yeah, I say its definitely a culture. WHether it deserves to be one or not is another matter altogether.
I don't believe the raw materials are scarce... If they were scarce we wouldn't have this much crap in production. No... the raw materials just aren't sitting out on the shelves of your local walmart.
End Consumers just haven't had a need to look for the raw materials. They're out there... and they're not 'scarce'... you just need to have an interest in finding them.
The subpoena is issued by the clerk of the district court upon a request containing: (1) the proposed subpoena, (2) a "copy of a notification described in subsection 512(c)(3)(A)," and (3) a sworn declaration that the subpoena seeks only the identity of the alleged infringer and will be used only to protect rights to the copyright. The clerk must "expeditiously issue" the subpoena if it is in proper form, with a properly executed declaration, and if the "notification filed satisfies the provisions of subsection (c)(3)(A)."
I'd like to see a clerk refuse to sign these forms. Our nation is composed of big guys and little guys, but we ALL have power to stop something we don't like. We can all hinder it's progress.
Imagine how ineffective the **AA's would be, if big institutions refused to honor subpoena's... if the clerks refused to ISSUE subpoena's even at the risk of losing their jobs... If juror's refused to convict the defendents... If the entire process was hindered by every chain link. If we, as Americans, refused to be branded as criminals and stood together.
We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately. - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
If you feel the statute involved in any criminal case being tried before you is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's God-given inalienable or Constitutional rights, you can affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime; for no man is bound to obey an unjust command. In other words, if the defendant has disobeyed some man-made criminal statute, and the statute is unjust, the defendant has in substance, committed no crime.
- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, (before the legislative branch bought out the judicial branch)
1) Identify what it is that you can do that cannot be done by anyone else
Like you, I refuse to believe that Americans are different than any other industrialized nation or citizen. I refuse to believe American coders or engineers are better than European or Asian ones.
The main thing that makes a country's workers able to develop new things are the wealth of material at their fingertips. IE - given the same textbooks and teachers, almost any two people can achieve the same end.
What I'm getting at is... IS there anything we can do that others cannot? Is there anything that I can make, that with the proper education couldn't be coppied by someone else and outsourced to a foreign nation where they pay less? Or perhaps even independently developed by the third world nation at a much lower cost?
Secretary systems - easily outsourced
Pay-roll systems - easily outsourced
Programming systems - easily outsourced
Construction - easily accomplished by immigrants
What's to stop a company from setting up camp and eventually housing 5000 people in cramped 'offices', in other countries or here at home, locking the doors, and having them pump out code much the same way we've done in the textile and toy industries, with only a manager or two on the floor or in the building to make sure the peasantry keeps working?
Well, it won't happen in America. We've been good at stopping accidents like that here at home recently. But this is the stuff capitalism brings. If it doesn't happen HERE, it doesn't mean it won't happen AT ALL... it'll just happen elsewhere. Out of sight, out of mind.
Think to yourself... what really makes India and China able to push out code cheaper? Maybe they have smaller cubicles? Maybe they don't air-condition their buildings for their workers. Yes... obviously the low standard of living down there makes it a bit easier... but just think of every way owners cut costs by moving textiles to third world nations, and you'll see some of the ways they'll cut costs by sending IT jobs there too.
If IT gets outsourced from all over America, and payroll gets outsourced, and designing via autocad gets outsourced, what's left for Americans except marketing to the peasantry, managing the peasantry, or running the product over a barcode FOR the peasantry?
>>Its not so much claiming theft is moral that is happening. Its people dont think of it as theft in the first place.
And we have this great thing called jury nullification, which could help these lawsuits be rather ineffective. We have the right to vote people innocent of a crime for any reason we want... now it's our duty to have a real reason and not just randomly vote people innocent.
If I were a juror in a case where someone used Mickey Mouse in a cartoon and was being sued, I could reasonably vote the man innocent because I feel copyright extensions were granted when they should not have been. If I were a juror in an mp3 copyright case, I could reasonably vote the defendents innocent based SOLELY on the premise that 50+% of our online population engages in some type of file trading.
Look at it this way. Yes, murder is illegal today and now. But if this were a rougher time, the wild west for example, and there were always duels on the streets, would I reasonably convict the winner of the duel of murder? No, of course not. And so here, where file trading is prevelent, I might also not convict a file-trader guilty of copyright infringement.
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court. --John Adams, 1771
Even if the court system TELLS US we should convict this person for breaking the law, we can, and SHOULD, use OUR OWN best judgement. When the layman's inability to change the law through proper channels (like lobbeying, since we don't have the funds cartels do), we can change the law by refusing to convict it's breakers, since it's an unjust or misguided law anyway. (Like marijuana possession / distribution).
The main idea is that if the country is divided over an issue, that issue shouldn't be regulated by LAWS. Laws should relegate what the nation, as a whole, can stand against. If a jury of 14 managed to get one person to nullify the case, then that means about 1/15 the country probably stands with that juror. It's our right, but it's also our responsibility.
I see this the same way I see some small companies and the minimum wage...
The owner of the company may support a nation or state-wide increase of the minimum wage. For now, however, they need to pay their employees lower so that they can compete with the huge multi-nationals that pay crap.
If I ever owned or ran Sony (highly unlikely but let's just go with it) I can see how this could be a good thing. Maybe I'd want to focus more on the electronics side than on the publishing side, but maybe, right now, the publishing and record portion is very profitable. I can't justify voluntarily cutting out my most profitable division. So you push for the electronics side, just as the other guy pushes for a raise in the minimum wage...
A simple game doesn't need much in the way of level designers or artists. So where are the big costs?
Most people won't buy simple games anymore when they can get them for free... With how readily available ROMs for older game systems are, as well the existence of ROMs for newer systems, and the overwhelming quality of the graphics and music in the newer games, the public becomes less and less willing to shell out $50 for a simpler game. They just expect more and more for their money.
not many people would consider paying the same amount for something that looks like it came from the mid 90s.
I agree... not to mention, how can the government help out all people in a particular field equally?
Odds are the corporations who are biggest will get the most help, while the smaller ones might end up being ignored entirely, which has the effect of raising the 'barrier of entry' and keeping the smaller ones down.
If you're going to do an off topic first post, at least put something funny or entertaining... i mean it wouldn't be that way...
"When I was 20, I saw a horse try to scratch it's own ass" - dad
You know as well as I that company websites are cumbersome and annoying, not to mention they're usually nothing more than an advertisement. Technologies like Smarterchild have the potential to be in high demand when people realize they can just ask it a simple question and get a simple answer.
How do I get red wine out of a yellow towel? is a lot easier than trying to find the FAQ, deal with slow-loading pages, etc etc.
some companies "CAN" be structured that way. The problem lies in that the rest of the economic system doesnt support companies like that nearly as well. These small companies don't get huge tax breaks like wallmart does whenever one of their employees dies. They don't get any number of benefits... and in fact they're always at risk of being pushed out of the market by one of the larger companies who DO work solely for profit... because to be honest profit sells.
so yes, some companies can be structured this way, but the security of the company as a whole, and its future as a whole, will be less certain and less secure overall. Our current government and economy support BIG business the most. Little business get little support.
I have to agree with suppafly...
Stop complaining until these bots start IMing random, or until it starts amassing AIM lists of people under 16 and selling them...
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/video/ossuck scable.html~content
"Every OS Sucks"
Well it was slow, it was buggy so they wrote it again,
and now they're up to OS ten
They'll charge you for the beta then charge you again,
but the MacOS still sucks.
>>You don't let that huge of a population use something that is truly still "beta." I used to play a game called Dragon Realms, stared as an AOL game, then went to the web. It's been around a good 12 years now and it's still in "beta". Hell, they were even making $12/month from all the customers... who were paying for a beta service. They even got some to fork over $40/month for 'premium' or 'platinum' or some other such nonesense... Did they play a more finished version of the game? Nope. They just got some items and alterations and junk... but the game was the same. Beta for all, apoligies for none.
I agree with you, as far as preventing stagnation goes. However there are plenty of areas in the world, and in the US, that will be 'behind the curve'. By behind the curve, I mean areas that won't be able to afford the technology... even the semi-outdated technology. While the constant innovation will continuously bring up the quality for those riding the curve, abvoe the curve, or only slightly behind it, those who are in drastically poorly off areas will be completely ignored by business. In this respect, while the behavior may seem anti-competitive, the municipality is essentially providing a service that the free market doesn't see it as profitable to provide. The free market had decided not to compete there... and so the government isn't being anti-competitive, as there simply wasn't any in that market anyway. The government had to mandate that phone companies provide phone service to the bible belt and rural areas, even when it was unprofitable for the phone companies to do so. Think about it... they had to build all these phone lines, set up all this infrastructure, for a few dozen people. It was a total waste of money, but they were required. Perhaps thats a solution... but if its still out of the price range of every one in the region, then the business had just been required to set up infrastructure and no one benefitted, because the people can't even pay for it. This is where government has a right to provide a service. It has every right to do so.
Not to mention crazy people out in the boonies (or just all the Texans for that matter) who fire their guns up in the air during parties, new years, etc etc. Stupid local custom... dangerous. Outlaw guns? no way! It's their right to do stupid things with guns! Just not with lazer pointers.
Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.
I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.
In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.
While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.
"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.
For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I said, "and others?"
"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method."
"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."
"On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".
"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
The name of the studen
Imagine the absolute surge of innovation that would occur if tomorrow, every piece of information was freed? Imagine every patent invalidated, every exclusive right to copy dissipated... culture opened up to the masses. Sure, it might not all be worthwhile, and when you lower the barrier to entry, you're going to get a lot of useless crap... but you'll also get a lot of good stuff too. And if slashdot can make a moderating system that sorts through the noise to find viable signals, I'm sure we'd be able to do the same thing with whatever stretches of innovation came after...
As an aside, I went to China for a week over the summer and got to talk with college students at Tianjin, about 2 hours south of Beijing. The students there, 22, 21, they've never heard of the massacre at the square. Not only that, but they don't believe it happened, and are quite certain that if it did happen, their government would have told them.
Clearly, one of the problems with the English language is that its rules are all over the place.
Mark Twain had a great idea on how to fix it, and rather than elaborate for you, I'll just paste his work here. Remember, it's for the good of the language.
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language
By Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same
konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and
Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with
Iear 5 doing awai iwth useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so
modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai
Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant
letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould
doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a
lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
(don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to) which gives your credibility a hit. Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.
:-/
/obligatory
Hey... I "unuderstand" him just fine
this newest article on the front page
says OS development isn't quite all the rage...
i mean people love it, but experts are in short supply
for the free OS programs you don't need to buy
now this lack of experts
should start ringing bells
in the ears of those corps
who might lose business to dells
I say OS is great and OS is grand,
but in order to become the way of the land
you must fight, you must train,
craft experts all your own
fuck this college nonsense,
throw a student a bone
train them yourself,
don't trust for-profit schools
because those learning institutes
graduate too many fools
The article says different, says colleges are grand
and they've started to make linux the law of the land
But I say that's bunk, and that they're full of crap,
and are way less accurate than my campus LDAP
See I'm at RIT, in the CS track
and I say this path is filled with cheap hacks
In my Operating Systems class
I figured I'd learn
How to make a small kernal,
or have small changes to discern...
But instead all they taught
was threads in C
a topic I learned
IN CS THREE!
ANd as half the students
smiled with glee,
There was one who was pissed,
and that there was me.
You can say all you want, but schools are slow to turn,
and I'll have learned very little by the time i adjurn,
I'm no OS expert, but I've got karma to burn...
Something slightly different would work much better, I believe, at least if our goal is to maximize total for your group instead of just one instantiation of your program.
;)
Specifically... it's nice to have 100 slaves starve themselves and work for you, where you get 5 and they get 0. If you intend on letting your slaves starve and then die, then you've just done very very well for yourself.
If you and your slave cooperated, however, you'd each get 3, a total of 6, which is greater than 5 of course.
So perhaps the best thing to do is cooperate with your slaves for a total of 6, and then take some away for yourself. Then you don't have to waste 2 going to find more slaves
Or... use propaganda to convince your slaves to give you 2 of their 3 from the cooperation because you need to use those 2 to keep them safe from terrorists. Or call it "taxes", or tithe, or some such.
In this way you'll be doing right by the group while still being an exploitative bastard of an overlord, and your people will love you for it. Don't outright screw your group by not cooperating... cooperate with them! Then take the benefits.
Maybe the 'script kiddies' aren't exactly what he was describing, and there needs to be a new term for the characters in the story, but what he did describe certainly is a culture.
When I was 15 I had a friend give me a few scripts which i ran randomly for a few days. I didn't go to chat rooms for that stuff. I didn't talk online with those people, and I didn't become involved in the alliances of groups. I was given a program, and I used it to get me some earthlink passwords. That's a script-kiddie.
The descriptions in the story, though, is definitely a culture where alliances are formed, a circle of silence and shadow is formed around those with 0day-whatever access, and the people who program the exploits most likely came up into the circle of trust by way of these allianced groups, gaining the trust of people higher and higher and showing competance in their coding.
The fact that attacks on government machines occur not for the purpose of attacking a government machine, but instead to trick your opponent into doing it and getting him/her into trouble shows it's a culture of its own, one that has no respect for the predominant culture and is willing to use our tools to hurt their enemy.
So yeah, I say its definitely a culture. WHether it deserves to be one or not is another matter altogether.
Well via google smackdown,
The undisputed champion is...
1. microsoft (40,200,000)
2. software patents (101,000)
I don't believe the raw materials are scarce... If they were scarce we wouldn't have this much crap in production. No... the raw materials just aren't sitting out on the shelves of your local walmart.
End Consumers just haven't had a need to look for the raw materials. They're out there... and they're not 'scarce'... you just need to have an interest in finding them.
The subpoena is issued by the clerk of the district court upon a request containing: (1) the proposed subpoena, (2) a "copy of a notification described in subsection 512(c)(3)(A)," and (3) a sworn declaration that the subpoena seeks only the identity of the alleged infringer and will be used only to protect rights to the copyright. The clerk must "expeditiously issue" the subpoena if it is in proper form, with a properly executed declaration, and if the "notification filed satisfies the provisions of subsection (c)(3)(A)."
I'd like to see a clerk refuse to sign these forms. Our nation is composed of big guys and little guys, but we ALL have power to stop something we don't like. We can all hinder it's progress.
Imagine how ineffective the **AA's would be, if big institutions refused to honor subpoena's... if the clerks refused to ISSUE subpoena's even at the risk of losing their jobs... If juror's refused to convict the defendents... If the entire process was hindered by every chain link. If we, as Americans, refused to be branded as criminals and stood together.
We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately. - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
If you feel the statute involved in any criminal case being tried before you is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's God-given inalienable or Constitutional rights, you can affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime; for no man is bound to obey an unjust command. In other words, if the defendant has disobeyed some man-made criminal statute, and the statute is unjust, the defendant has in substance, committed no crime.
- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, (before the legislative branch bought out the judicial branch)
1) Identify what it is that you can do that cannot be done by anyone else
Like you, I refuse to believe that Americans are different than any other industrialized nation or citizen. I refuse to believe American coders or engineers are better than European or Asian ones.
The main thing that makes a country's workers able to develop new things are the wealth of material at their fingertips. IE - given the same textbooks and teachers, almost any two people can achieve the same end.
What I'm getting at is... IS there anything we can do that others cannot? Is there anything that I can make, that with the proper education couldn't be coppied by someone else and outsourced to a foreign nation where they pay less? Or perhaps even independently developed by the third world nation at a much lower cost?
Secretary systems - easily outsourced
Pay-roll systems - easily outsourced
Programming systems - easily outsourced
Construction - easily accomplished by immigrants
What's to stop a company from setting up camp and eventually housing 5000 people in cramped 'offices', in other countries or here at home, locking the doors, and having them pump out code much the same way we've done in the textile and toy industries, with only a manager or two on the floor or in the building to make sure the peasantry keeps working?
Well, it won't happen in America. We've been good at stopping accidents like that here at home recently. But this is the stuff capitalism brings. If it doesn't happen HERE, it doesn't mean it won't happen AT ALL... it'll just happen elsewhere. Out of sight, out of mind.
Think to yourself... what really makes India and China able to push out code cheaper? Maybe they have smaller cubicles? Maybe they don't air-condition their buildings for their workers. Yes... obviously the low standard of living down there makes it a bit easier... but just think of every way owners cut costs by moving textiles to third world nations, and you'll see some of the ways they'll cut costs by sending IT jobs there too.
If IT gets outsourced from all over America, and payroll gets outsourced, and designing via autocad gets outsourced, what's left for Americans except marketing to the peasantry, managing the peasantry, or running the product over a barcode FOR the peasantry?
>>Its not so much claiming theft is moral that is happening. Its people dont think of it as theft in the first place. And we have this great thing called jury nullification, which could help these lawsuits be rather ineffective. We have the right to vote people innocent of a crime for any reason we want... now it's our duty to have a real reason and not just randomly vote people innocent. If I were a juror in a case where someone used Mickey Mouse in a cartoon and was being sued, I could reasonably vote the man innocent because I feel copyright extensions were granted when they should not have been. If I were a juror in an mp3 copyright case, I could reasonably vote the defendents innocent based SOLELY on the premise that 50+% of our online population engages in some type of file trading. Look at it this way. Yes, murder is illegal today and now. But if this were a rougher time, the wild west for example, and there were always duels on the streets, would I reasonably convict the winner of the duel of murder? No, of course not. And so here, where file trading is prevelent, I might also not convict a file-trader guilty of copyright infringement. It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court. --John Adams, 1771 Even if the court system TELLS US we should convict this person for breaking the law, we can, and SHOULD, use OUR OWN best judgement. When the layman's inability to change the law through proper channels (like lobbeying, since we don't have the funds cartels do), we can change the law by refusing to convict it's breakers, since it's an unjust or misguided law anyway. (Like marijuana possession / distribution). The main idea is that if the country is divided over an issue, that issue shouldn't be regulated by LAWS. Laws should relegate what the nation, as a whole, can stand against. If a jury of 14 managed to get one person to nullify the case, then that means about 1/15 the country probably stands with that juror. It's our right, but it's also our responsibility.
I see this the same way I see some small companies and the minimum wage... The owner of the company may support a nation or state-wide increase of the minimum wage. For now, however, they need to pay their employees lower so that they can compete with the huge multi-nationals that pay crap. If I ever owned or ran Sony (highly unlikely but let's just go with it) I can see how this could be a good thing. Maybe I'd want to focus more on the electronics side than on the publishing side, but maybe, right now, the publishing and record portion is very profitable. I can't justify voluntarily cutting out my most profitable division. So you push for the electronics side, just as the other guy pushes for a raise in the minimum wage...
A simple game doesn't need much in the way of level designers or artists. So where are the big costs?
Most people won't buy simple games anymore when they can get them for free... With how readily available ROMs for older game systems are, as well the existence of ROMs for newer systems, and the overwhelming quality of the graphics and music in the newer games, the public becomes less and less willing to shell out $50 for a simpler game. They just expect more and more for their money.
not many people would consider paying the same amount for something that looks like it came from the mid 90s.
I agree... not to mention, how can the government help out all people in a particular field equally?
Odds are the corporations who are biggest will get the most help, while the smaller ones might end up being ignored entirely, which has the effect of raising the 'barrier of entry' and keeping the smaller ones down.
If you're going to do an off topic first post, at least put something funny or entertaining... i mean it wouldn't be that way... "When I was 20, I saw a horse try to scratch it's own ass" - dad
You know as well as I that company websites are cumbersome and annoying, not to mention they're usually nothing more than an advertisement. Technologies like Smarterchild have the potential to be in high demand when people realize they can just ask it a simple question and get a simple answer.
How do I get red wine out of a yellow towel? is a lot easier than trying to find the FAQ, deal with slow-loading pages, etc etc.
some companies "CAN" be structured that way. The problem lies in that the rest of the economic system doesnt support companies like that nearly as well. These small companies don't get huge tax breaks like wallmart does whenever one of their employees dies. They don't get any number of benefits... and in fact they're always at risk of being pushed out of the market by one of the larger companies who DO work solely for profit... because to be honest profit sells.
so yes, some companies can be structured this way, but the security of the company as a whole, and its future as a whole, will be less certain and less secure overall. Our current government and economy support BIG business the most. Little business get little support.
even begging to be advertised to doesnt work. It's really not all as bad as they're making it out to seem. You all need to settle down.
I have to agree with suppafly...
Stop complaining until these bots start IMing random, or until it starts amassing AIM lists of people under 16 and selling them...