Geez, if you search Google for Hobbesian Choice, you find a lot of people making this mistake--some even offering some nonsense explanation linking it to words in Leviathan.
Civil Disobedience made GREAT sense throughout most of the 20th century, because the great powers of the world required a huge amount of labor to get anything done. A society practicing civil disobedience is basically a gigantic General Strike--no work shall be done as long as injustice remains. India was worthless with Gandhi agitating Indians, so the Brits left.
But now that manufacturing is becoming more and more automated, and the pool of laborers is growing so quickly, labor is worth less and less and less, and physical resources those people sit on is worth more and more.
So as the decades wear on in this century, you can expect violence and genocide to become more and more frequent as responses to civil disobedience of any sort. The people of impoverished country X aren't going to put up with my exploiting them anymore? We'll, just kill them all and import workers from impoverished country Y.
Civil disobedience works with humans, but as society becomes more and more regimented and mechanical, it becomes more inhuman.
Most people, including me, entered real info the first time. Then we found that it would ask again whenever we would switch computers, or sometimes they would just forget the cookies for the hell of it. From then on we just filled in whatever gobble-de-gook is easiest to fill in--usually just pound the keys for random letters.
Then we get sick of that and go else where for the same news.
Some of us might use bugmenot, which can even be integrated into your browser, to get past this crap. But for the most part I think people just look elsewhere.
Actually, even though I hated the gameplay of xenosaga and eventually sold the game halfway through (too much running down empty hallways), I kind of liked those stupid cutesy future emails and pseudoscience. The one I remember the best was how there was a bug in the nanotechnology that produced buildings, and therefore there were locked "Secret Rooms" throughout the entire game. Like they needed a stupid sci-fi explanation for every convention and cliche of the RPG genre.
It wouldn't be so much turning off the software, so much as the people who run the software going on strike.
On top of that, it doesn't seem very professional. If I were MS, I'd wait for people to do something so childish and then say, "See, what's keeping the people supplying your free software from acting like a bunch of spoiled children every time they think they're not getting their way?"
Well, ANY set opf workers can go on strike, OSS or MS. At least the OSS workers never sick the BSA on you if you plan to switch providers--how's that for professional?
The most important defenses against patents are more patents
This lets Microsoft, IBM, and HP get along, but does nothing to protect them from the likes Eolas or Rambus, which don't actually make any products--so defensive patents are worthless.
I am PRAYING that they make these patents much more expensive. The patents system is useless for regular people with non-fraudulent intentions. So it costs a few thousands of dollars. Big whoop. The cost to the industry of a bad patent can extend into hundreds of millions of dollars. (witness recent ridiculous patent decisions against Microsoft.)
At the very LEAST, they should be required to pay the hundreds of thousand dollars or so necessary to pay for REAL experts in the field to sort out crap patents from good patents.
And when that happened, did they start a campaign to end software patents, or did they start gathering a huge pile of their own patents--which would be utterly useless defesively, because the companies suing microsoft don't actually make any products, so defensive patents don't stop them.
Microsoft may not have created this system and may be paying now, but they're definitely the ones with the most to gain from software patents should they decide to use them to further their monopoly--and they've done nothing to suggest that their intentions are otherwise. The submitter was right--when you think of software patents, you should think of Microsoft owning everything.
Seriously. In fact, I think Satan created this game--which had no random encounters but huge completely empty areas one was required to wander through until you met a mysterious set of conditions, as a "be careful what you wish for!" joke on everyone who hates random encounters.
This is very informative, but definitely not insightful at all. One independent artist signing with iTunes proves absolutely nothing.
You record it, and send it over to iTunes
You forgot the step "become famous enough that not only will iTunes give you special permission to upload mp3s, but they'll even set up booths at your concerts plugging iTunes and iPods." Which is what Moby did.
The parent may have gone off the handle, but you haven't posted anything to contradict his or her main point--iTunes, from what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong) only distributes labeled artists or unlabeled artists that are important and famous enough enough to not really need to work with iTunes anyway. Apple makes no money except indirectly through iPod sales, the RIAA makes a ton of money, the vast, vast majority of artists able to sign with Apple make extremely little money per sale, downhillbattle is correct, and a huge portion of people have an extremely bizarre ego defense mechanism of blinding themselves to any fault by Apple.
Okay, so they've got 2 years of time until Longhorn is released to change one a configuration defaults and fix this "problem". I think Mozilla will manage.;)
The menu bar is fairly intrusive--but wouldn't it be a fair compromise to mandate the status bar's appearance? Or maybe even just a single icon that signifies hidden statusbar/menubar?
I think it's your final point that explains why Mozilla won't do your 4 numbered points--people at Mozilla are anticipating Longhorn, and hoping to offer some sort of similar functionality in Mozilla. If any way of solving this problem other than eliminating remote use of local widgets can be found, Mozilla would definitely prefer that, I suspect.
I think if you compare the MyIE features to what's available here, it will definitely not be Firefox that gets blown away. I also disagree with the parent--Mozilla actually reacts to bugs more quickly, and has a stricter notion of what qualifies as a security bug than the developers of Internet Explorer. (this one doesn't count--Mozilla, IE, and Opera all have this problem. You've seen all the banner ads that look like they have IE widgets.)
Er, wait, I didn't make my point clear--MS has the advantage over Sun, because MS is forced to deliver a product and allow the product to stand or fail on its own merits. While Sun is in the habit of selling the product first then building it. So Sun programs have great looking feature sets and use more advanced technologies--because those are the things you can say about a product before you've actually made it.
This is extremely interesting. But, as we all know, requirements always change. So if you're forced to deliver your product before the customer gets a chance to evaluate it (CAN they truly evaluate it before they test it on their data?) then failure seems much more likely, no?
It's reasons like this that make me suspect that companies like Microsoft, that have shied away from government contracting, tend to have an advantage than guys like Sun and IBM who gravitate towards it. Microsoft releases a product, and (until they become a monopoly in that field), knows that it will succeed for fail based on user opinions and expert reviews after the fact. Sun, on the other hand, has all kinds of awesome technologies like Java virtual machines that guarantee safe execution of code, yet never seems to be able to put all the pieces together and turn awesome technolgies into revolution. Thus, even though Sun has been working for a decade now towards the idea of allowing consumers to execute code from remote web pages and services without endangering their local computers, it will most likely be Microsoft who brings the very same technology into regular usage with.Net.
The word "hackers" was successfully co-opted long, long, long ago ("a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system"), so don't fault Apple's (currently correct and appropriate) use of the word, and save us the tiresome lectures.
Hey, check you own links. The definition you give is almost ALWAYS underneath the correct definition, something similar to "One who is proficient at using or programming a computer". It is only a few holdouts like Apple who continue to use hacker incorrectly.
And regarding Apple's culpability with the DMCA--are those who owned slaves when slavery was legal to be held blameless? Legal and moral are two different things. It is wrong to take away someone's free speech, regardless of what the law says.
I own an iBook, but unlike you, I am not prevented by Stockholm Syndrome from realizing when Apple doing something very rotten.
I'm curious--have you actually played the Pokemon game boy RPG games? While they can't compete with newer Final Fantasy games in terms of graphics or story, the combat system is simulataneously simpler and deeper.
This is an extremely good point. In the beginning, the space.com article quotes Van Allen:
My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest?
But surely robot space probes fail this test even more spectacularly than ISS. Van Allen's only motivation is pure science--knowing for the sake of knowing. But only he and a few of his ivory tower friends share that motivation.
As for me, I would like to see a reduction in both manned and unmanned spaceflight. Given the imminent Hubbert Peak, manned space flight should be delayed until we have the technology to build self-sustaining colonies, and unmanned space flight should be limited to that which has material benefits for those of us on Earth. Adventure and Knowledge are wonderful, but our highest priority should be to make sure that there are still people alive in the future to enjoy all this adventure and science.
There is no doubt that piracy of games for computers is at an all-time high.
Given the huge decline in PC sales, PC development, and rise in console usage (and piracy), then, yeah, I would be EXTREMELY surprised to find out more PC games were being pirated now than before. (This is very different from more bandwidth being used by PC games--the games are bigger now than they used to be.)
Oh that line about out of print is completely insane--whether or not you agree that information should be free, I think you'd have to be crazy not to agree that information should never be rare. I mean, you might as well complain that Gutenburg press books aren't as valuable as the illuminated manuscripts they used to make. If there was some sort of compulsory licensing for older computer programs, I might oppose underdogs--but there isn't, so I applaud underdogs for making sure that our gaming history isn't lost to the sands of time. I, like the post office, always oppose artificial rarity.
Slashdot Mirror
Weird.
But now that manufacturing is becoming more and more automated, and the pool of laborers is growing so quickly, labor is worth less and less and less, and physical resources those people sit on is worth more and more.
So as the decades wear on in this century, you can expect violence and genocide to become more and more frequent as responses to civil disobedience of any sort. The people of impoverished country X aren't going to put up with my exploiting them anymore? We'll, just kill them all and import workers from impoverished country Y.
Civil disobedience works with humans, but as society becomes more and more regimented and mechanical, it becomes more inhuman.
Then we get sick of that and go else where for the same news.
Some of us might use bugmenot, which can even be integrated into your browser, to get past this crap. But for the most part I think people just look elsewhere.
Actually, even though I hated the gameplay of xenosaga and eventually sold the game halfway through (too much running down empty hallways), I kind of liked those stupid cutesy future emails and pseudoscience. The one I remember the best was how there was a bug in the nanotechnology that produced buildings, and therefore there were locked "Secret Rooms" throughout the entire game. Like they needed a stupid sci-fi explanation for every convention and cliche of the RPG genre.
Well, that's what he said, actually. Note the remarks about the GPL.
And software patents only for a couple of decades.
On top of that, it doesn't seem very professional. If I were MS, I'd wait for people to do something so childish and then say, "See, what's keeping the people supplying your free software from acting like a bunch of spoiled children every time they think they're not getting their way?"
Well, ANY set opf workers can go on strike, OSS or MS. At least the OSS workers never sick the BSA on you if you plan to switch providers--how's that for professional?
This lets Microsoft, IBM, and HP get along, but does nothing to protect them from the likes Eolas or Rambus, which don't actually make any products--so defensive patents are worthless.
At the very LEAST, they should be required to pay the hundreds of thousand dollars or so necessary to pay for REAL experts in the field to sort out crap patents from good patents.
Microsoft may not have created this system and may be paying now, but they're definitely the ones with the most to gain from software patents should they decide to use them to further their monopoly--and they've done nothing to suggest that their intentions are otherwise. The submitter was right--when you think of software patents, you should think of Microsoft owning everything.
Seriously. In fact, I think Satan created this game--which had no random encounters but huge completely empty areas one was required to wander through until you met a mysterious set of conditions, as a "be careful what you wish for!" joke on everyone who hates random encounters.
You record it, and send it over to iTunes
You forgot the step "become famous enough that not only will iTunes give you special permission to upload mp3s, but they'll even set up booths at your concerts plugging iTunes and iPods." Which is what Moby did.
The parent may have gone off the handle, but you haven't posted anything to contradict his or her main point--iTunes, from what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong) only distributes labeled artists or unlabeled artists that are important and famous enough enough to not really need to work with iTunes anyway. Apple makes no money except indirectly through iPod sales, the RIAA makes a ton of money, the vast, vast majority of artists able to sign with Apple make extremely little money per sale, downhillbattle is correct, and a huge portion of people have an extremely bizarre ego defense mechanism of blinding themselves to any fault by Apple.
Okay, so they've got 2 years of time until Longhorn is released to change one a configuration defaults and fix this "problem". I think Mozilla will manage. ;)
The menu bar is fairly intrusive--but wouldn't it be a fair compromise to mandate the status bar's appearance? Or maybe even just a single icon that signifies hidden statusbar/menubar?
I think it's your final point that explains why Mozilla won't do your 4 numbered points--people at Mozilla are anticipating Longhorn, and hoping to offer some sort of similar functionality in Mozilla. If any way of solving this problem other than eliminating remote use of local widgets can be found, Mozilla would definitely prefer that, I suspect.
I think if you compare the MyIE features to what's available here, it will definitely not be Firefox that gets blown away. I also disagree with the parent--Mozilla actually reacts to bugs more quickly, and has a stricter notion of what qualifies as a security bug than the developers of Internet Explorer. (this one doesn't count--Mozilla, IE, and Opera all have this problem. You've seen all the banner ads that look like they have IE widgets.)
Er, wait, I didn't make my point clear--MS has the advantage over Sun, because MS is forced to deliver a product and allow the product to stand or fail on its own merits. While Sun is in the habit of selling the product first then building it. So Sun programs have great looking feature sets and use more advanced technologies--because those are the things you can say about a product before you've actually made it.
It's reasons like this that make me suspect that companies like Microsoft, that have shied away from government contracting, tend to have an advantage than guys like Sun and IBM who gravitate towards it. Microsoft releases a product, and (until they become a monopoly in that field), knows that it will succeed for fail based on user opinions and expert reviews after the fact. Sun, on the other hand, has all kinds of awesome technologies like Java virtual machines that guarantee safe execution of code, yet never seems to be able to put all the pieces together and turn awesome technolgies into revolution. Thus, even though Sun has been working for a decade now towards the idea of allowing consumers to execute code from remote web pages and services without endangering their local computers, it will most likely be Microsoft who brings the very same technology into regular usage with .Net.
DeCSS was no big deal?
Hey, check you own links. The definition you give is almost ALWAYS underneath the correct definition, something similar to "One who is proficient at using or programming a computer". It is only a few holdouts like Apple who continue to use hacker incorrectly.
And regarding Apple's culpability with the DMCA--are those who owned slaves when slavery was legal to be held blameless? Legal and moral are two different things. It is wrong to take away someone's free speech, regardless of what the law says.
I own an iBook, but unlike you, I am not prevented by Stockholm Syndrome from realizing when Apple doing something very rotten.
Exactly. Therefore those who keep the law revelvant are to be reviled.
Get over it.
Exactly. Apple is being reprehensible here. Get over it.
I'm curious--have you actually played the Pokemon game boy RPG games? While they can't compete with newer Final Fantasy games in terms of graphics or story, the combat system is simulataneously simpler and deeper.
And then you have the dungeons and dragons sort of geek...
But surely robot space probes fail this test even more spectacularly than ISS. Van Allen's only motivation is pure science--knowing for the sake of knowing. But only he and a few of his ivory tower friends share that motivation.
As for me, I would like to see a reduction in both manned and unmanned spaceflight. Given the imminent Hubbert Peak, manned space flight should be delayed until we have the technology to build self-sustaining colonies, and unmanned space flight should be limited to that which has material benefits for those of us on Earth. Adventure and Knowledge are wonderful, but our highest priority should be to make sure that there are still people alive in the future to enjoy all this adventure and science.
Given the huge decline in PC sales, PC development, and rise in console usage (and piracy), then, yeah, I would be EXTREMELY surprised to find out more PC games were being pirated now than before. (This is very different from more bandwidth being used by PC games--the games are bigger now than they used to be.)
Oh that line about out of print is completely insane--whether or not you agree that information should be free, I think you'd have to be crazy not to agree that information should never be rare. I mean, you might as well complain that Gutenburg press books aren't as valuable as the illuminated manuscripts they used to make. If there was some sort of compulsory licensing for older computer programs, I might oppose underdogs--but there isn't, so I applaud underdogs for making sure that our gaming history isn't lost to the sands of time. I, like the post office, always oppose artificial rarity.