Oh, I understand why it went that way. My only objection was to calling it 'democratic'. It wasn't.
Personally, my thought is that every citizen who can be sentenced as an adult in a court of law should be able to vote. Which would either give the bright sixteen-year-olds I know some say, or stop them from giving the death penalty to kids... and both options seem pretty good to me. It strikes me as really awful that, in the US, a 17-year-old can die for his country but not help choose who leads it.
See, I fail to see how an issue like that could have been rejected so democratically when the people INVOLVED weren't allowed to vote on it.
"Should women be allowed to vote? Okay, men... what do you think?"
Which is not to say anything bad about Switzerland, just the interpretation in the parent post is a bit off. Democracy comes from the people. Not just 'part of the people'. The people.
Have you ever heard of someone being prosecuted for making a backup of a book? Or any copy protection devices on books? Not really. It's probably just not specified because the average person is not quite insane enough to spend their entire life standing in front of a photocopier. Or transcribing it by hand.
I don't think you can reform copyright law while treating copyright for different types of things differently. I don't, genuinely, believe that authorship of a computer program should be essentially different from authorship of a book. With all the protections that entails.
Which is not to say that copyright law in itself isn't screwed up. But the whole MS problem isn't a copyright issue, it's a monopoly issue. And the music industry will eventually either die or adjst with the times.
The real problems with copyright lie with things like the insanely long copyright period and the narrowness of 'fair use' rights for *everything*, not just music. There are middle schoolers out there getting lawsuit threats over fan art galleries. Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse. These are big problems, and things that seem to not be well addressed by the article.
While for most of the others, I'll agree... Apache is a 'shoddy knock-off'? Whah?
I'm not about to switch to Linux for my laptop, I'll admit, though I might load it onto my other machine once I've got it fixed, just for fun. I happen to be very enamored of Photoshop. But, at the same time, while I write my school papers in Office XP--I do my pleasure writing in OpenOffice.org because it has features that MS Office doesn't. (Two words: Page styles.) And Apache has served a lot of websites well for a very long time.
Open Source doesn't automatically make something good--but it doesn't automatically make it bad, either. Maybe you should try actually evaluating these products on their own merits, sometime?
Some of us enjoy the pleasures of real-time object creation NOW, without all the mess of graphics and monthly fees and bad tech support, thank you very much. There are a number of MOOs, MUDs, and MUSHes still alive and well. And many of us are quite happy there.
Getting donations from mine is like pulling teeth. But, in the long run? If they don't donate, and I can't pay for it, then obviously people don't really care about it enough for it to desperately need to stay online.
Look at your state's laws. Mine? Has a lot of very specific requirements. One of them, I've never seen a single piece of spam actually fulfill. This means every single person who's sent me a piece of spam email since that law was passed... has, in fact, broken the law.
I'd be willing to bet, however, that I'm not the only one posting here who is more in the '10-year-old economy car' range than the 'new luxury car' range. Which makes the whole thing kinda moot. I do pay for Salon already, though.
And don't forget trucks, too.
on
Add-Ons Add Up
·
· Score: 2
Of, say, the U-Haul variety.
I'm hoping I don't have to move again anytime soon, because that was painful. Big signs anywhere about it being 19.95. If you expect to spend anywhere *near* that, you'd better be moving to someplace down the block, because the extra mileage is super-expensive. And, of course, very similar surcharges everywhere.
And they tried to give us a truck with a half-empty gas tank, and then tell us that there was a refueling fee if it wasn't returned at the same point.
"To pay for you to put gas into the truck... the same way you obviously didn't?"
I pay $10 for my service--but I also run a forum in that space. Even without that, though, I think I'd be paying for email from someplace else. I happen to be very fond of the one I have, which gives me...
--My own domain and no competition for email usernames, and therefore an address people have a prayer of remembering. --Basic webmail when I need it--and POP3/SMTP the rest of the time. --As many email addresses, forwarders, and mailing lists as I want, all completely ad-free. --SpamAssassin, with the ability to edit my configuration to match my needs.
There are a lot of places where you can get better services than Yahoo's for extremely affordable prices. I wish more people would look around for them.
That sales tax that gets collected? Has to be, you know, actually given to the location which it is collected for. They expect you to report these things and get somewhat irate if you don't. (As my father learned when, despite the lack of internet sales tax, the state went after him for/estimated/ tax based on his completely out-of-state sales.)
Let's say you're an internet business. Do you honestly want to be writing out all those checks?
It's also a public place. You are not allowed to actually remove your clothing in the middle of a library. It should therefore follow that perhaps images of other people who've done the same thing are not appropriate in that setting.
Nobody's preventing you from accessing the material somewhere. Libraries do not have some kind of mandate to allow everyone everywhere to access every bit of information that ever existed. They don't have to carry any given book if they don't want to. That's their prerogative. (Mine is consistantly leaving out the middles of sci-fi series. Bah.)
Just as they do not have to carry every book in existance, they do not have to allow you to view every possible document on the internet. 'Publicly funded' does not mean they have to let you do whatever you want.
That they're there isn't necessarily a big deal, but quantity can be telling. And how many people you see saying good things. And so on.
This is true of all sorts of things. The first computer that was completely mine was purchased from a company that eventually went belly-up, had all sorts of shady business practices, and tons of bad things said about them on the 'net, but I didn't find that out until after I bought it.
Let the buyer be informed. It's always a good idea to read up before making major purchases.
What's the point of wireless if you think the ability to be in another room is a disadvantage? If it's so awful, why not just plug the computers in physically like in the olden days?
It seems to be more and more common, these days--companies that are selling more resources than I actually have.
If you tell me that my connection will go a certain speed, I should be able to use that speed all night and all day if I want to, because that's what I'm paying you for. Counting on the idea that I won't use those resources you provide me is not, in my opinion, a good business model.
Yet, internet providers of all types use it. Web hosts give you insane amounts of disk space... and then, surprisingly enough, their disks start getting overfilled when people start using more than just a tenth of what they pay for.
If these places want to limit the bandwidth, they ought to be saying that right off the bat. "For this monthly fee, you get X mb of downloads, and Y megabytes of uploads, at speeds up to Z kb/sec."
That way, people can start using what they have sensibly. "Okay, I know I only have this much upload, so I won't share files on these P2P networks." Or maybe they'll just share smaller files, or only share a few days a month, or whatever... it's their decision, now, what to do with the resources they've paid for.
I think depending on under-usage has always been dangerous, and it was only a matter of time before something came along that started encouraging everyday users to actually make use of their broadband connections.
There are females out there whose rooms look nearly so bad. Until recently, my bedroom was done in bright red with Mario border--the relic of my younger brother's childhood, I swear to god--and LotR posters. And usually a lot of soda cans, the assorted wires that go with my laptop, etc. Plus I have another room with my currently nonfunctional desktop.
It's all in disarray because I'm remodeling, but... geek rooms are completely okay, in my book!
Even if we presume that these images haven't been put through Photoshop--which, as others have mentioned, seems to be in evidence--then there's still no proof, without showing some actual new functionality of Windows besides how it looks, that it's not fake.
After all, there are a number of utilities out there already that change the look and feel of Windows. Between some of those and a program like Photoshop, one could very well produce 'screenshots' of anything one could conceive.
Did the questions really ask whether they thought they/should/ be able to, whether they/wanted/ to, or whether they thought/others/ should be able to? The first two are night and day... and don't think that people won't respond differently to the third than the first. It's a matter of context.
Manipulating a poll like this is extremely easy--and as easy to do by accident as on purpose. You can't rely on numbers like this.
*facepalms* Die Fledermaus.
on
Airborne Mouse
·
· Score: 2
I have been duly corrected. And I just had a German test this morning. In my own defense, we're covering home furnishings right now, not bats and/or computer peripherals.;)
Please, say you pulled that out of something/besides/ those tacky S&M novels thinly disguised as fantasy/science fiction.
Of course, maybe/this/ asteroid has the world where the men are all required to do the bidding of the women... with far fewer stupid sci-fi trappings. Then, the news might actually interest me.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean I've been making them by hand all this time, when I could have just done it on the computer?
Hm. Now, that would be an example. "Look, you can even insert a potato into this cooling fan..."
Now, I already knew that mine functioned as a hot plate. Love those Athlons.
Oh, I understand why it went that way. My only objection was to calling it 'democratic'. It wasn't.
Personally, my thought is that every citizen who can be sentenced as an adult in a court of law should be able to vote. Which would either give the bright sixteen-year-olds I know some say, or stop them from giving the death penalty to kids... and both options seem pretty good to me. It strikes me as really awful that, in the US, a 17-year-old can die for his country but not help choose who leads it.
See, I fail to see how an issue like that could have been rejected so democratically when the people INVOLVED weren't allowed to vote on it.
"Should women be allowed to vote? Okay, men... what do you think?"
Which is not to say anything bad about Switzerland, just the interpretation in the parent post is a bit off. Democracy comes from the people. Not just 'part of the people'. The people.
Have you ever heard of someone being prosecuted for making a backup of a book? Or any copy protection devices on books? Not really. It's probably just not specified because the average person is not quite insane enough to spend their entire life standing in front of a photocopier. Or transcribing it by hand.
I do agree on the "first sale" doctrine, however.
I don't think you can reform copyright law while treating copyright for different types of things differently. I don't, genuinely, believe that authorship of a computer program should be essentially different from authorship of a book. With all the protections that entails.
Which is not to say that copyright law in itself isn't screwed up. But the whole MS problem isn't a copyright issue, it's a monopoly issue. And the music industry will eventually either die or adjst with the times.
The real problems with copyright lie with things like the insanely long copyright period and the narrowness of 'fair use' rights for *everything*, not just music. There are middle schoolers out there getting lawsuit threats over fan art galleries. Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse. These are big problems, and things that seem to not be well addressed by the article.
While for most of the others, I'll agree... Apache is a 'shoddy knock-off'? Whah?
I'm not about to switch to Linux for my laptop, I'll admit, though I might load it onto my other machine once I've got it fixed, just for fun. I happen to be very enamored of Photoshop. But, at the same time, while I write my school papers in Office XP--I do my pleasure writing in OpenOffice.org because it has features that MS Office doesn't. (Two words: Page styles.) And Apache has served a lot of websites well for a very long time.
Open Source doesn't automatically make something good--but it doesn't automatically make it bad, either. Maybe you should try actually evaluating these products on their own merits, sometime?
The whole game sets itself up in a big way for a sequel.
There isn't one.
There probably isn't ever going to be one.
I played the whole way through without knowing that, and it set me up for a major disappointment. It was a lovely game, though.
...you happen to be taller than the average hobbit.
Which most human adults are.
Now, I like the concept, but it seemed like the pipe they were using wouldn't accomodate anybody larger than a child.
Some of us enjoy the pleasures of real-time object creation NOW, without all the mess of graphics and monthly fees and bad tech support, thank you very much. There are a number of MOOs, MUDs, and MUSHes still alive and well. And many of us are quite happy there.
Getting donations from mine is like pulling teeth. But, in the long run? If they don't donate, and I can't pay for it, then obviously people don't really care about it enough for it to desperately need to stay online.
Look at your state's laws. Mine? Has a lot of very specific requirements. One of them, I've never seen a single piece of spam actually fulfill. This means every single person who's sent me a piece of spam email since that law was passed... has, in fact, broken the law.
I'd be willing to bet, however, that I'm not the only one posting here who is more in the '10-year-old economy car' range than the 'new luxury car' range. Which makes the whole thing kinda moot. I do pay for Salon already, though.
Of, say, the U-Haul variety.
I'm hoping I don't have to move again anytime soon, because that was painful. Big signs anywhere about it being 19.95. If you expect to spend anywhere *near* that, you'd better be moving to someplace down the block, because the extra mileage is super-expensive. And, of course, very similar surcharges everywhere.
And they tried to give us a truck with a half-empty gas tank, and then tell us that there was a refueling fee if it wasn't returned at the same point.
"To pay for you to put gas into the truck... the same way you obviously didn't?"
We got given another truck.
I pay $10 for my service--but I also run a forum in that space. Even without that, though, I think I'd be paying for email from someplace else. I happen to be very fond of the one I have, which gives me...
--My own domain and no competition for email usernames, and therefore an address people have a prayer of remembering.
--Basic webmail when I need it--and POP3/SMTP the rest of the time.
--As many email addresses, forwarders, and mailing lists as I want, all completely ad-free.
--SpamAssassin, with the ability to edit my configuration to match my needs.
There are a lot of places where you can get better services than Yahoo's for extremely affordable prices. I wish more people would look around for them.
That sales tax that gets collected? Has to be, you know, actually given to the location which it is collected for. They expect you to report these things and get somewhat irate if you don't. (As my father learned when, despite the lack of internet sales tax, the state went after him for /estimated/ tax based on his completely out-of-state sales.)
Let's say you're an internet business. Do you honestly want to be writing out all those checks?
It's also a public place. You are not allowed to actually remove your clothing in the middle of a library. It should therefore follow that perhaps images of other people who've done the same thing are not appropriate in that setting.
Nobody's preventing you from accessing the material somewhere. Libraries do not have some kind of mandate to allow everyone everywhere to access every bit of information that ever existed. They don't have to carry any given book if they don't want to. That's their prerogative. (Mine is consistantly leaving out the middles of sci-fi series. Bah.)
Just as they do not have to carry every book in existance, they do not have to allow you to view every possible document on the internet. 'Publicly funded' does not mean they have to let you do whatever you want.
That they're there isn't necessarily a big deal, but quantity can be telling. And how many people you see saying good things. And so on.
This is true of all sorts of things. The first computer that was completely mine was purchased from a company that eventually went belly-up, had all sorts of shady business practices, and tons of bad things said about them on the 'net, but I didn't find that out until after I bought it.
Let the buyer be informed. It's always a good idea to read up before making major purchases.
What's the point of wireless if you think the ability to be in another room is a disadvantage? If it's so awful, why not just plug the computers in physically like in the olden days?
It seems to be more and more common, these days--companies that are selling more resources than I actually have.
If you tell me that my connection will go a certain speed, I should be able to use that speed all night and all day if I want to, because that's what I'm paying you for. Counting on the idea that I won't use those resources you provide me is not, in my opinion, a good business model.
Yet, internet providers of all types use it. Web hosts give you insane amounts of disk space... and then, surprisingly enough, their disks start getting overfilled when people start using more than just a tenth of what they pay for.
If these places want to limit the bandwidth, they ought to be saying that right off the bat. "For this monthly fee, you get X mb of downloads, and Y megabytes of uploads, at speeds up to Z kb/sec."
That way, people can start using what they have sensibly. "Okay, I know I only have this much upload, so I won't share files on these P2P networks." Or maybe they'll just share smaller files, or only share a few days a month, or whatever... it's their decision, now, what to do with the resources they've paid for.
I think depending on under-usage has always been dangerous, and it was only a matter of time before something came along that started encouraging everyday users to actually make use of their broadband connections.
*raises hand*
There are females out there whose rooms look nearly so bad. Until recently, my bedroom was done in bright red with Mario border--the relic of my younger brother's childhood, I swear to god--and LotR posters. And usually a lot of soda cans, the assorted wires that go with my laptop, etc. Plus I have another room with my currently nonfunctional desktop.
It's all in disarray because I'm remodeling, but... geek rooms are completely okay, in my book!
Even if we presume that these images haven't been put through Photoshop--which, as others have mentioned, seems to be in evidence--then there's still no proof, without showing some actual new functionality of Windows besides how it looks, that it's not fake.
After all, there are a number of utilities out there already that change the look and feel of Windows. Between some of those and a program like Photoshop, one could very well produce 'screenshots' of anything one could conceive.
I mean, think about it.
/should/ be able to, whether they /wanted/ to, or whether they thought /others/ should be able to? The first two are night and day... and don't think that people won't respond differently to the third than the first. It's a matter of context.
Did the questions really ask whether they thought they
Manipulating a poll like this is extremely easy--and as easy to do by accident as on purpose. You can't rely on numbers like this.
I have been duly corrected. And I just had a German test this morning. In my own defense, we're covering home furnishings right now, not bats and/or computer peripherals. ;)
Just produce it in Germany, and we've got the best of both worlds.
Please, say you pulled that out of something /besides/ those tacky S&M novels thinly disguised as fantasy/science fiction.
/this/ asteroid has the world where the men are all required to do the bidding of the women... with far fewer stupid sci-fi trappings. Then, the news might actually interest me.
Of course, maybe