You forgot the bit about guaranteeing security, for free, for the better part of the last century. That cost a few bucks for sure, but none of that matters. Notice how the Time magazine cover sporting the nose-less girl went virtually unnoticed on the left? Being reminded that the taliban really are the bad guys doesn't fit with the world view these idiots like to project. The US could stand on it's head trying to avoid civilian casualties while the taliban murders entire villages and the left would still scream the first time somebody turned up with a hangnail. They've already made up their minds and nothing is going to change them.
Anyway the strange thing (to me) about these charges isn't that they surfaced, it's that they were issued in Sweden, one of the biggest liberals of the European liberal democracies and perhaps the least likely to gin up bogus charges - all with a sitting US president who is politically the farthest to the left ever. Worse yet, Assange clearly has a gigantic ego - you'd have to to think you could start a website exposing the secrets of nations without trouble. What if it's true? What if Assange is a John Edwards/Al Gore league sanctimonious gasbag who just can't keep his zipper up or his hands to himself? It's not like this sort of thing is uncommon - there are news stories every day about the high and mighty falling at the word of the bimbo of the week. HP just lost their high flying CEO two weeks ago - this kind of behavior comes with the territory.
Additionally, the whole issue of rape charges is probably moot anyway. Assange can just buy a chalet next door to Roman Polanski and call it a day.
Equally rapacious and soulless - they make their own reality and expect everyone else to live it. The RIAA is a classic case study on the influence of the private sector on governance.
RFID isn't a security concern NOW. If they start putting them on, say, driver's licenses it's another story. Why would anyone think RFID is a good idea when every other system that can be abused IS abused? The new barcode like scanning squares (WTF are they called?) can hold plenty of information and can only be read when the cardholder deliberately presents the card for scanning.
I'd say it's impossible. Google is too big to ignore. Frankly, if something like that happened you'd see congressional involvement. The market as a whole, however, is bigger than Google. When the top players all want tiered services, eventually they'll find a way to get it, even if it means death to the internet as we know it.
I'd rather have my kids actually learning the subject matter the teacher is supposed to be teaching. One thing the world has no shortage of is incompetent assholes and the mark of a decent school is the lack thereof. The kids will get plenty of experience dealing with incompetence in the real world.
In short, the story is about another whitewash of things that make our society worse instead of better. Kids shouldn't have to deal with the spectacle of an incompetent teacher, rather with the spectacle of said incompetent being thrown out on his ass as is right and proper.
Re:More corporate BS
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You're mostly spot on. "information wants to be free" has always been idiotic without concise definitions of "information" and "free". Copyrighted materials will always have strings attached; the question is whether the holder of the strings can figure a way to cash in. Let's face it - people usually put genuine valuable labor into things they copyright. That's why they want to sell it. Information like "Spain won the world cup" is also valuable but it isn't copyrightable. This is the kind of thing people want to find out over a relatively free internet. The term "relatively" applies because people are generally paying for access via direct ISP fees or phone contracts or perhaps advertising supported access. The point is the internet was never free. Students pay for access via tuition, libraries offer "free" access supported by local tax dollars. SOMEBODY has to pay for the infrastructure, just like somebody had to pay for studio time to produce a song or movie or whatever. There's no such thing as a free lunch and the best we can hope for is an advertising supported model that will cost you some eyeball time as they force you to watch commercials.
It's also stupid to talk about the internet as a single entity when it's a vast collection of entities. People do own or control parts of it but even so, if you want to monetize it you have to have something worth paying for and some way to persuade people to pay for it. Ad support again? Depends on what you're selling. Google gained success by realizing that you can't own it all but you can provide the ability to find it, but it's all supported by ad revenue, too.
"Free internet access for all" ignores the fact that it cost money to provide access and more money to create content. The real question is how will the content providers - news organizations, movie studios, musicians, etc., get paid. Otherwise all you're talking about is leaving the door open to an empty house.
Any way you look at it, it's a colossal waste of money and expertise. The shuttles represent an existing viable launch platform with all the necessary manufacturing, engineering and logistical support already in place.
To me, it's like a successful national effort to paint the mona lisa, where once you finish the painting you simply burn it. All the work is wasted and we're left with nothing but memories.
It's mind boggling that this program will be simply dismantled when we don't have another launch platform ready to go.
Patents will always be a double edged sword. A guy with a great idea can easily have it stolen by a large company in the same field with the ability to create and market the product much faster. Knock off companies become king. Think of an entire world full of unscrupulous chinese manufacturers forever cloning other people's products.
OTOH big companies with deep pockets can play the patent troll game far easier than in individual entrepreneur/inventor.
Ideally a patent provides a limited time period for inventors to profit from their idea, encouraging innovation while including a mechanism whereby these innovations can eventually pass into the public domain for the benefit of the general public.
The entire purpose of the EU was to reduce the crippling bureaucratic balkanization and get all the countries working from the same playbook. How can you expect a small country with, for example, no electronics manufacturing to have patent office expertise for that industry?
The big problem with the current issue isn't patents but the lack of checks and balances. The core idea of democracy is that every part of government has "civilian oversight".
But that's because obama was the one saying it, so it was ok. Frankly, all this information makes me scared and confused. I wish they would start a department of truth in the government to tell me what I should be thinking.
Considering that small business is the engine of job growth and innovation, this is the dumbest idea to come out of USPTO ever. Imagine the world today if Apple, HP, and Microsoft were all prevented from flourishing. The internet would not exist, mainframes would still be king, silicon valley would not exist. Real innovation almost never comes from existing large companies.
You just wasted an awful lot of electrons failing to sound smart. Your sweeping sophomoric claim that "the former objective is democratic" shows you've drunk deep of the kool aid. Face it; you've earned the title of "idiot". Al Gore is merely the most recognizable face of democratic hypocrisy. You're being played like a fiddle by the libs and you wear the blinders willingly.
Truer words were never spoken. Jobs/Apple's actions over the events of the last few weeks - the lost iphone, Flash, Lala prove that Jobs is making Bill Gates look like an amateur when it comes to draconian control over his products. But the fanboy's eat it up because Jobs told them it was better that way.
Bright indeed. The immune system has an amazing ability for specificity. Once we master the art of training the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells the fight will be over. Interestingly, there was a cancer treatment in the late 1800's that relied on injecting cancer tumors with an infectious serum designed to elicit an immune response. The treatment had some success but was dangerous as the patient ran the risk of death from infection. I really think immuno therapy is the future of cancer therapy.
I'd rather live next door to a nuclear power plant than a coal fired power plant. This is including the fact that I lived less than 100 miles downwind from TMI. Coal puts more nuclear isotopes in the atmosphere than nuke plants ever did, including chernobyl and TMI.
Anyone remember MS deleting everyone's email a few years ago? They long ago proved they regard customers merely as cash cows to be milked. Their heavy handed marketing tactics are so ingrained in their corporate culture it's no surprise they rolled out yet another "screw the customer" plan. This is all par for the course and yet another reminder why I'll never willingly buy a single MS product.
Why is it that liberal's answer to every problem is to throw more money at it? Certainly if we cut all other spending to the bone we could fund individual tutors for every student, free laptops, massages, anything. The question is this: who's responsibility is it to ensure students work hard and strive to achieve excellence? THE PARENTS. Not the government. End of story.
No amount of government spending can make up for bad parenting. Entitlement spending is a deep, dark, bottomless hole.
Once you go communist, you never have to worry about being a corporate bootlicker again. Now you have to worry about being a PARTY bootlicker. Oh, you also kill pharm R&D. All research now has to be government funded. Better raise taxes. Congratulations, comrade.
Go study history and get back to me on how communism has worked out every place it was tried.
There seems to be a certain type of person who simply can not conceive that there are people who are not essentially humanitarian. These people simply assume that everyone has your best interest at heart. The criminal mind is entirely foreign to them. It's naive in the extreme, nevertheless we have a man intelligent enough to earn a PhD, yet dumb enough to think that power won't be abused despite evidence to the contrary in the news each and every day.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the bit about guaranteeing security, for free, for the better part of the last century. That cost a few bucks for sure, but none of that matters. Notice how the Time magazine cover sporting the nose-less girl went virtually unnoticed on the left? Being reminded that the taliban really are the bad guys doesn't fit with the world view these idiots like to project. The US could stand on it's head trying to avoid civilian casualties while the taliban murders entire villages and the left would still scream the first time somebody turned up with a hangnail. They've already made up their minds and nothing is going to change them.
Anyway the strange thing (to me) about these charges isn't that they surfaced, it's that they were issued in Sweden, one of the biggest liberals of the European liberal democracies and perhaps the least likely to gin up bogus charges - all with a sitting US president who is politically the farthest to the left ever. Worse yet, Assange clearly has a gigantic ego - you'd have to to think you could start a website exposing the secrets of nations without trouble. What if it's true? What if Assange is a John Edwards/Al Gore league sanctimonious gasbag who just can't keep his zipper up or his hands to himself? It's not like this sort of thing is uncommon - there are news stories every day about the high and mighty falling at the word of the bimbo of the week. HP just lost their high flying CEO two weeks ago - this kind of behavior comes with the territory.
Additionally, the whole issue of rape charges is probably moot anyway. Assange can just buy a chalet next door to Roman Polanski and call it a day.
Equally rapacious and soulless - they make their own reality and expect everyone else to live it. The RIAA is a classic case study on the influence of the private sector on governance.
RFID isn't a security concern NOW. If they start putting them on, say, driver's licenses it's another story. Why would anyone think RFID is a good idea when every other system that can be abused IS abused? The new barcode like scanning squares (WTF are they called?) can hold plenty of information and can only be read when the cardholder deliberately presents the card for scanning.
What is the advantage of RFID?
I'd say it's impossible. Google is too big to ignore. Frankly, if something like that happened you'd see congressional involvement. The market as a whole, however, is bigger than Google. When the top players all want tiered services, eventually they'll find a way to get it, even if it means death to the internet as we know it.
I'd rather have my kids actually learning the subject matter the teacher is supposed to be teaching. One thing the world has no shortage of is incompetent assholes and the mark of a decent school is the lack thereof. The kids will get plenty of experience dealing with incompetence in the real world.
In short, the story is about another whitewash of things that make our society worse instead of better. Kids shouldn't have to deal with the spectacle of an incompetent teacher, rather with the spectacle of said incompetent being thrown out on his ass as is right and proper.
You're mostly spot on. "information wants to be free" has always been idiotic without concise definitions of "information" and "free". Copyrighted materials will always have strings attached; the question is whether the holder of the strings can figure a way to cash in. Let's face it - people usually put genuine valuable labor into things they copyright. That's why they want to sell it. Information like "Spain won the world cup" is also valuable but it isn't copyrightable. This is the kind of thing people want to find out over a relatively free internet. The term "relatively" applies because people are generally paying for access via direct ISP fees or phone contracts or perhaps advertising supported access. The point is the internet was never free. Students pay for access via tuition, libraries offer "free" access supported by local tax dollars. SOMEBODY has to pay for the infrastructure, just like somebody had to pay for studio time to produce a song or movie or whatever. There's no such thing as a free lunch and the best we can hope for is an advertising supported model that will cost you some eyeball time as they force you to watch commercials.
It's also stupid to talk about the internet as a single entity when it's a vast collection of entities. People do own or control parts of it but even so, if you want to monetize it you have to have something worth paying for and some way to persuade people to pay for it. Ad support again? Depends on what you're selling. Google gained success by realizing that you can't own it all but you can provide the ability to find it, but it's all supported by ad revenue, too.
"Free internet access for all" ignores the fact that it cost money to provide access and more money to create content. The real question is how will the content providers - news organizations, movie studios, musicians, etc., get paid. Otherwise all you're talking about is leaving the door open to an empty house.
He did get the ipod.
http://waxy.org/2003/07/shipping_the_st/
Any way you look at it, it's a colossal waste of money and expertise. The shuttles represent an existing viable launch platform with all the necessary manufacturing, engineering and logistical support already in place.
To me, it's like a successful national effort to paint the mona lisa, where once you finish the painting you simply burn it. All the work is wasted and we're left with nothing but memories.
It's mind boggling that this program will be simply dismantled when we don't have another launch platform ready to go.
Patents will always be a double edged sword. A guy with a great idea can easily have it stolen by a large company in the same field with the ability to create and market the product much faster. Knock off companies become king. Think of an entire world full of unscrupulous chinese manufacturers forever cloning other people's products.
OTOH big companies with deep pockets can play the patent troll game far easier than in individual entrepreneur/inventor.
Ideally a patent provides a limited time period for inventors to profit from their idea, encouraging innovation while including a mechanism whereby these innovations can eventually pass into the public domain for the benefit of the general public.
The entire purpose of the EU was to reduce the crippling bureaucratic balkanization and get all the countries working from the same playbook. How can you expect a small country with, for example, no electronics manufacturing to have patent office expertise for that industry?
The big problem with the current issue isn't patents but the lack of checks and balances. The core idea of democracy is that every part of government has "civilian oversight".
But that's because obama was the one saying it, so it was ok. Frankly, all this information makes me scared and confused. I wish they would start a department of truth in the government to tell me what I should be thinking.
Considering that small business is the engine of job growth and innovation, this is the dumbest idea to come out of USPTO ever. Imagine the world today if Apple, HP, and Microsoft were all prevented from flourishing. The internet would not exist, mainframes would still be king, silicon valley would not exist. Real innovation almost never comes from existing large companies.
You just wasted an awful lot of electrons failing to sound smart. Your sweeping sophomoric claim that "the former objective is democratic" shows you've drunk deep of the kool aid. Face it; you've earned the title of "idiot". Al Gore is merely the most recognizable face of democratic hypocrisy. You're being played like a fiddle by the libs and you wear the blinders willingly.
You're an idiot if you really believe that. Al Gore just bought another mansion. Think about it.
Truer words were never spoken. Jobs/Apple's actions over the events of the last few weeks - the lost iphone, Flash, Lala prove that Jobs is making Bill Gates look like an amateur when it comes to draconian control over his products. But the fanboy's eat it up because Jobs told them it was better that way.
LMAO. These idiots are still expecting obama to keep his promises. Too bad it doesn't work that way.
Bright indeed. The immune system has an amazing ability for specificity. Once we master the art of training the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells the fight will be over. Interestingly, there was a cancer treatment in the late 1800's that relied on injecting cancer tumors with an infectious serum designed to elicit an immune response. The treatment had some success but was dangerous as the patient ran the risk of death from infection. I really think immuno therapy is the future of cancer therapy.
I'd rather live next door to a nuclear power plant than a coal fired power plant. This is including the fact that I lived less than 100 miles downwind from TMI. Coal puts more nuclear isotopes in the atmosphere than nuke plants ever did, including chernobyl and TMI.
This law targets people who are in the country *illegally*. Who gives a crap? Seriously, how hard is it to keep your green card in your wallet?
Anyone remember MS deleting everyone's email a few years ago? They long ago proved they regard customers merely as cash cows to be milked. Their heavy handed marketing tactics are so ingrained in their corporate culture it's no surprise they rolled out yet another "screw the customer" plan. This is all par for the course and yet another reminder why I'll never willingly buy a single MS product.
Welfare programs never put a man on the moon. Pull your head out of your ass.
Why is it that liberal's answer to every problem is to throw more money at it? Certainly if we cut all other spending to the bone we could fund individual tutors for every student, free laptops, massages, anything. The question is this: who's responsibility is it to ensure students work hard and strive to achieve excellence? THE PARENTS. Not the government. End of story.
No amount of government spending can make up for bad parenting. Entitlement spending is a deep, dark, bottomless hole.
Once you go communist, you never have to worry about being a corporate bootlicker again. Now you have to worry about being a PARTY bootlicker. Oh, you also kill pharm R&D. All research now has to be government funded. Better raise taxes. Congratulations, comrade.
Go study history and get back to me on how communism has worked out every place it was tried.
...Or we have yet another slashdot poster dumb enough not to realize he was just played in exactly the same way.
There seems to be a certain type of person who simply can not conceive that there are people who are not essentially humanitarian. These people simply assume that everyone has your best interest at heart. The criminal mind is entirely foreign to them. It's naive in the extreme, nevertheless we have a man intelligent enough to earn a PhD, yet dumb enough to think that power won't be abused despite evidence to the contrary in the news each and every day.
It's a shame we picked the "no lube" option.